193 Quotes by Marcel Duchamp

My idea was to chose an object that wouldn't attract me, either by its beauty or by its ugliness. To find a point of indifference in my looking at it, you see

Since a three-dimensional object casts a two-dimensional shadow, we should be able to imagine the unknown four-dimensional object whose shadow we are. I for my part am fascinated by the search for a one-dimensional object that casts no shadow at all.

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

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

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

All decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis.

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.

Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth.

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.