Marcel Duchamp Artist Quotations

Since the tubes of paint used by the artist are manufactured and ready made products we must conclude that all the paintings in the world are 'readymades aided' and also works of assemblage.

In my day artists wanted to be outcasts, pariahs. Now they are all integrated into society

In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reactions.

I was poking fun at myself most of all.

To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing. If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the aesthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it. All his decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out.

Not all artists are Chess players, but all Chess players are artists

Chess players are madmen of a certain quality, the way the artist is supposed to be, and isn't, in general.

The life of an artist is like the life of a monk, a lewd monk if you like, very Rabelaisian. It is an ordination.

The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves.

The most interesting thing about artists is how they live

No, the thing to do is try to make a painting that will be alive in your own lifetime.

The life of a chess master is much more difficult than that of an artist - much more depressing. An artist knows that someday there'll be recognition and monetary reward, but for the chess master there is little public recognition and absolutely no hope of supporting himself by his endeavors. If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him - as if anyone could - but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted.

The artist performs only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it, and it is the onlooker who has the last word.

In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius; he will have to wait for the verdict of posterity.

Anything is art if an artist says it is.

I believe that the artist doesn't know what he does. I attach even more importance to the spectator than to the artist.

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. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives its final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.