Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp is a French-born American artist whose work and ideas continue to have major-league influence on the development of post-World War II Western art. His sterling advice to modern art collectors helped shape the tastes of the art world, and certainly nobody will ever quite look at a toilet cistern in the same way again. While he's most often associated with the Dada and Surrealism movements, Duchamp's participation in Surrealism was largely behind the scenes, and after being involved in New York Dada, he barely participated in its Parisian version. Literally thousands of books and articles attempt to interpret Duchamp's artwork and philosophy, but in interviews and his writing, Duchamp only adds to the befuddled mystery. The interpretations themselves interest him as creations of their own, and as reflections of the interpreter. A wayward, mischievous and playful guy, Duchamp prods thoughts about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much with words, but with actions such as dubbing a urinal "art" and naming it Fountain, and by "giving up" art to play chess. He in fact produces relatively few artworks, as he quickly moves through the avant-garde rhythms of his time, and on into ruminations about other, more vital possibilities: In chess, a fork is a tactic that uses one piece to attack two or more of the opponent's pieces at the same time, hoping to achieve material gain (by capturing one of the opponent's pieces) because the opponent can only counter one of the two (or more) threats. Amen to that. "I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position." By the way, Dada scoffs at capital letters... atrociously. D'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent.