91桃色

Duchamp-isms is a selection of illuminating quotations from Marcel Duchamp (1887鈥�1968), one of the most important figures in the history of modern art. A painter, sculptor, writer, and chess player, Duchamp changed the very definition of art with his 鈥渞eadymades鈥濃�攅veryday objects such as a bicycle wheel or bottle rack that he titled, signed, and presented as art. He provoked critics and the public with works such as the Cubist-Futurist painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) and Fountain (1917), a readymade composed of a men鈥檚 urinal signed 鈥淩. Mutt.鈥� Prizing the intellectual over the aesthetic, Duchamp inspired later movements like Minimalism, Conceptualism, and Pop Art. Delightful and witty, Duchamp-isms offers rich insights into the mind of a true icon of modern art.

The quotes in Duchamp-isms, drawn primarily from interviews, have been selected and introduced by Francis Naumann, a leading authority on Duchamp, and organized in eight thematic sections: philosophies of art; painting; Dada and Surrealism; the readymades; chess; literary influences; commercialism in art; and philosophies of life and death. The book also features a brief chronology of Duchamp鈥檚 life and career.

• 鈥淚 have always had a horror of being a 鈥榩rofessional鈥� painter. The minute you become that, you are lost.鈥�
• 鈥淗umor and laughter鈥攏ot necessarily derogatory derision鈥攁re my pet tools. This may come from my general philosophy of never taking the world too seriously鈥攆or fear of dying of boredom.鈥�
• 鈥淎rt can never be adequately defined, because the translation of an aesthetic emotion into a verbal description is as inaccurate as your description of fear when you have been actually scared.鈥�
• 鈥淎rt never saved the world. It cannot.鈥�