Duchamp

Photograph of Marcel Duchamp sitting in front of a chess set designed by Max Ernst, 1968.

“Chess can be described as the movement of pieces eating one another.”

“The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem...I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”

"All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone...the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act."

Marcel Duchamp [1887-1968] the "painter and mixed media artist was associated with Cubism, Dadaism and Surrealism, though he avoided any alliances. His work is characterized by his humor, the variety and unconventionality of its media, and its incessant probing of the boundaries of art. His legacy includes the insight that art can be about ideas instead of worldly things, a revolutionary notion that would resonate with later generations of artists."

- Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp