
Marcel Duchamp Interview on Art and Dada (1956) [video] - brudgers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzwADsrOEJk
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platz
"It's only a way of putting myself in the right position for that ideal
public. Because the danger is to please an immediate public—that comes around
you and takes you in and accepts you and gives you success and everything.
Instead of that, if you wait for your public, that should come 50 years.. 100
years after your death, that's the right public I want."

"It's a habit, a repetition long enough to become 'taste'. If you cut it short
(after you've done it), it stays as a thing by itself. But if it's repeated a
number of times, it becomes a taste."

~~~
ironchief
It is the same reason why Taleb does not accept prizes and Peterson reminds us
that "you are not the wave"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmjAVZjLQr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmjAVZjLQr8)

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billfruit
I was reading a chess book and it had transcript of a match played by someone
Duchamp; was amazed to learn that it was the same man as the artist. At one
point in his life he transitioned from art to chess, even wrote books on
openings.

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Hoasi
Marcel Duchamp had an endearing personality. Well educated although never
serious about it.

~~~
theoh
I'm not sure he was endearing. He made light of a lot of things other people
take seriously, that's true. If his only appeal was an ability to wear his
learning lightly, he wouldn't be remembered. There's something corrosive and
more than a little bit inhuman about much of what he produced, and, for the
people who approve of him, that's what makes him significant. He's not an
avuncular figure:

[https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2014/11/how-duchamp-
st...](https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2014/11/how-duchamp-stole-the-
urinal/)

~~~
Hoasi
Interesting, never heard this story before, thank you for mentioning it.

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ddebernardy
Kara Swisher regularly bitches about how tech execs aren't into humanities
enough to comprehend the level of responsibility they have. But from the
outside, I observe that Duchamp, other humanities types of figures, and
humanities related articles show up on the HN front page every week.

To those who live in SV: is this because the HN audience is an odd crowd, or
is there a lot of merit to Swisher's criticism?

~~~
barbecue_sauce
A lot of the comments on HN art posts are people bitching about how they don't
understand modern art or think a specific artist is undeserving of their fame,
conflating "skillful execution" with artistic merit.

~~~
ddebernardy
Maybe they need a short primer to understand modern art.

What Duchamp did when he submitted his Fountain to an art expo he was a jury
member of, was to send a giant middle finger to art critics of the time, which
only focused on technique.

His message was: this is art because I as the artist say it is, and the
purpose of modern art is to send a message. Art critics may or may not
understand the message's meaning, but meaning there is.

To supplement that, a relevant Duchamp quote on how to find a piece of art's
meaning might be of interest: "The most interesting thing about artists is how
they live".

(And to HNers who read this and think it all sounds like mental masturbation,
you are right: it is; but some artists are better at communicating the ongoing
conversation, much like there are bloggers that are better at communicating
what the coolest programming language or framework or pattern or what have you
is.)

~~~
hnhg
Also, I'd argue that a valid purpose of art is something akin to 'play', in
which it explores ideas intellectually that are not suitable for the
formalities of philosophy or science. However, this seems frivolous or useless
to many folks, from the outside.

