193 Quotes by Marcel Duchamp

Art has the lovely habit of ruining all artistic theories.

Anything is art if an artist says it is.

It's the viewer that makes the work.

Artmaking is making the invisible, visible.

What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion.

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

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.

I’m not at all sure that the concept of the readymade isn’t the most important single idea to come out of my work.