Marcel Duchamp Quotes

Quotes about:

• Anything is art if an artist says it is.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Artist, Ifs

  68 Copy quote

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

  Marcel Duchamp

  Artist, Creative, Lasts

  73 Copy quote

• It's not what you see that is art. Art is the gap.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Gaps, Art Is

  Wilfried Dörstel, Marcel Duchamp (1989). “Augenpunkt, Lichtquelle und Scheidewand: die symbolische Form im Werk Marcel Duchamps : unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Witzzeichnungen von 1907 bis 1910 und der Radierungen von 1967/68”

  65 Copy quote

• Artmaking is making the invisible, visible.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Invisible, Visible

  60 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Creativity, Creative

  Dalia Judovitz, Marcel Duchamp (2010). “Drawing on Art: Duchamp and Company”, p.56, U of Minnesota Press

  61 Copy quote

• Destruction is also creation.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Creation, Destruction

  55 Copy quote

• It's the viewer that makes the work.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Viewers

  43 Copy quote

• Art has the lovely habit of ruining all artistic theories.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Lovely, Habit

  35 Copy quote

• I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Believe, Belief

  "Marcel Duchamp: a riotous A-Z of his secret life" by Thomas Girst, www.theguardian.com. April 07, 2014.

  81 Copy quote

• I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Creativity, Ideas, Imagination

  Marcel Duchamp (1994). “Duchamp: Passim : a Marcel Duchamp Anthology”, Craftsman House

  52 Copy quote

• I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Order, Ontology

  Arturo Schwarz, Marcel Duchamp (1997). “The complete works of Marcel Duchamp”, Delano Greenridge Editions

  57 Copy quote

• Humor is the only reason to live.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Reason, Reason To Live

  39 Copy quote

• As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Use, Language, Damn

  70 Copy quote

• The only thing that is not art is inattention

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Inattention, Art Is

  18 Copy quote

• I thought to discourage aesthetics... I threw the bottlerack and the urinal in their faces and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Beauty, Faces, Admire

  12 Copy quote

• Art is not about itself but the attention we bring to it.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Attention, Art Is

  39 Copy quote

• I don’t care about the word ‘art’ because it has been so discredited. So I want to get rid of it. There is an unnecessary adoration of ‘art’ today.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Care, Want

  17 Copy quote

• Unless a picture shocks, it is nothing.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Shock

  Marcel Duchamp, Michel Sanouillet, Paul Matisse, Anne Sanouillet, Paul B. Franklin (2008). “Duchamp du signe, suivi de Notes”

  21 Copy quote

• You cannot define electricity. The same can be said of art. It is a kind of inner current in a human being, or something which needs no definition.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Needs, Definitions

  49 Copy quote

• Art is like a shipwreck; it's every man for himself.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Men, Shipwreck

  30 Copy quote

• I consider painting as a means of expression, not as a goal.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Mean, Expression, Goal

  12 Copy quote

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

  Marcel Duchamp

  Believe, Artist, Doe

  33 Copy quote

• 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 this 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.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Artist, Self, Space

  ART-news, 56. no. 4, 1957.

  21 Copy quote

• Society takes what it wants. The artist himself does not count, because there is no actual existence for the work of art. The work of art is always based on the two poles of the onlooker and the maker, and the spark that comes from the bipolar action gives birth to something - like electricity. But the onlooker has the last word, and it is always posterity that makes the masterpiece. The artist should not concern himself with this, because it has nothing to do with him.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Two, Giving

  24 Copy quote

• 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.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Artist, Waiting, Analysis

  Arturo Schwarz, Marcel Duchamp (1997). “The complete works of Marcel Duchamp”, Delano Greenridge Editions

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