An abstract painting need in 50 years by no means look "abstract" any longer.
Marcel DuchampRead
A painting that doesn't shock isn't worth painting.
Interpretation
Art should provoke thought and evoke strong emotions.
Marcel Duchamp emphasizes the idea that true art must challenge viewers and stir a reaction. If a painting doesn't elicit strong feelings or provoke critical thinking, it fails to fulfill its purpose in stimulating dialogue and reflection about society and the human experience.
In practice
In an art class, to inspire students, one might say, 'Remember, a painting that doesn't shock isn't worth painting.'
An abstract painting need in 50 years by no means look "abstract" any longer.
All this twaddle, the existence of God, atheism, determinism, liberation, societies, death, etc., are pieces of a chess game called language, and they are amusing only if one does not preoccupy oneself with 'winning or losing this game of chess.
I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.
I never finished the 'Large Glass' because, after working on it for eight years, I probably got interested in something else; also, I was tired. It may be that, subconsciously, I never intended to finish it because the word 'finish' implies an acceptance of traditional methods and all the paraphernalia that accompany them.
It's a product of two poles - there's the pole of the one who makes the work, and the pole of the one who looks at it. I give the latter as much importance as the one who makes it.
I became a librarian at the Sainte-Genevieve Library in Paris. I made this gesture to rid myself of a certain milieu, a certain attitude, to have a clean conscience, but also to make a living. I was twenty-five. I had been told that one must make a living, and I believed it.
All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression.
When I go to Comic-Cons and people line up for autographs, so many people have a story about how they are moved, how they get tearful about what 'Back To The Future' meant to them.
I think there's a difference between a working actor, a movie star and a celebrity. They're all three different things.
Music played a large role in the survival of the black people in America β that and a sense of humor that just couldn't be enslaved.
I wouldn't want everybody to be an art or literature major, but the world would be poorer - figuratively, anyway - if we were all coding software or running companies. We also want musicians to awaken our souls, writers to lead us into fictional lands, and philosophers to help us exercise our minds and engage the world.
I would rather do a good hours work weeding than write two pages of my best; nothing is so interesting as weeding. I went crazy over the outdoor work, and at last had to confine myself to the house, or literature must have gone by the board.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.