Best quotes by Marcel Duchamp on Painting

Checkout quotes by Marcel Duchamp on Painting

• ‟ In the 'Nude Descending a Staircase,' I wanted to create a static image of movement: movement is an abstraction, a deduction articulated within the painting, without our knowing if a real person is or isn't descending an equally real staircase.

  - Marcel Duchamp
  

• ‟ A painting that doesn't shock isn't worth painting.

  - Marcel Duchamp
  

• ‟ Since Courbet, it's been believed that painting is addressed to the retina. That was everyone's error. The retinal shudder! Before, painting had other functions: it could be religious, philosophical, moral... our whole century is completely retinal, except for the Surrealists, who tried to go outside it somewhat.

  - Marcel Duchamp
  

• ‟ In French, there is an old expression, la patte, meaning the artist's touch, his personal style, his 'paw'. I wanted to get away from la patte and from all that retinal painting.

  - Marcel Duchamp
  

• ‟ When you make a painting, even abstract, there is always a sort of necessary filling-in.

  - Marcel Duchamp
  

• ‟ Painting is a language of its own. You cannot interpret one form of expression with another form of expression.

  - Marcel Duchamp
  

• ‟ Rational intelligence is dangerous and leads to ratiocination. The painter is a medium who doesn't realize what he is doing. No translation can express the mystery of sensibility, a word, still unreliable, which is nevertheless the basis of painting or poetry, like a kind of alchemy.

  - Marcel Duchamp
  

• ‟ Marcel, no more painting; go get a job.

  - Marcel Duchamp