Page 39 - Studio International - January February 1975

A COMPLETE REVERSAL OF ART OPINIONS
BY MARCEL DUCHAMP, ICONOCLAST

'It is just because Rembrandt is none libraries. The dead should not be Baudelarian, exotic, a traveller, gathering,
of the things that posterity has given him permitted to be so much stronger than the romances out of vague or rare
that he remains.' living. We must learn to forget the past, or uncivilized or little known countries.
Monsieur Duchamp explodes figurative to live our own lives in our own time.' `Sargent, Simon, Blanche, Cottett.
bombs like this one in a tone that is Monsieur Duchamp was asked for Bernard are impossible. They trade upon
matter of fact but not arrogant. He is opinions upon the work of men whose antiquity. The prolific Besnard is an
neither modest nor vain. He has red names are written large in the list of art. especially disgusting parasite. Maurice
hair, blue eyes, freckles, a face, except for `Velasquez, like Constantin Meunier, Denis is a little better. But he goes to
a certain sensitiveness, and a figure that is the type of great man. You feel that he mass and going feels that he must reflect
would seem American even among asks you to stand by and admire his the fact in his work. And so in the
Americans. He is young and strangely greatness, his dexterity, his grandeur twentieth century we have what may be
unaffected by the vast amount of and he is terrifically suave. That is not called neo-catholicism in art. I do not
argument created by his work. He is so true of Rodin who is more subtle and believe that art should have anything in
away from the French front on a thus better able to fool us. His drawings common with definite theories that are
furlough. He neither talks, nor looks, may last for twenty years but next to apart from it. That is too much like
nor acts like an artist. It may be that in those of Cezanne they are impossible. propaganda. I like Bouguereau better
the accepted sense of the word he is not Rodin is always sensuous, a materialistic than any of these men, he is so much
an artist. In any case he has nothing but animal, if you will. Cezanne reaches more honestly an Academician. The
antipathy for the accepted sense of any of much higher. others pose as revolutionary and their
the terms of art. He talked in a studio `Greco is the root of Picasso. They call puny little souls cannot know what
almost bare of adornment, and Picasso the leader of the cubists but he is revolution means. They must have taken
containing, here and there, leant against not a cubist strictly speaking. He is a their definition out of the dictionary.
a wall, a chair and a table, pieces of a cubist today — something else tomorrow. `Whistler has a living personality that
picture painted on glass that eventually The only real cubists today are Gleizes he could not fully conserve in his
will be put together on a single canvas. and Metzinger. pictures. Remove all the evidence of the
`Rembrandt could never have expressed `But that word cubism means nothing influence of traditions upon the work of
all the thoughts found in his work. In the at all, it might just as well, for the sense Gustave Moreau and you will find that he
religious age he was the great religious it contains, have been policarpist. An is the most isolated figure of his epoch.
painter, another epoch discovered in him ironical remark of Matisse's gave birth There is a great sympathy between the
a profound psychologist, another a poet, to it. Now we have a lot of little cubists, work of Redon and Moreau in refinement
still another, the last one, a master monkeys following the motion of the of colour and sensitiveness.
craftsman. This may prove that people leader without comprehension of their `Redon is one of the sources to which
give more to pictures than they take significance. Their favourite word is Matisse has gone consciously or not.
from them. Certainly no man can be a discipline. It means everything to them Matisse's colour has not the solidity of
profound psychologist and a great and nothing. Cezanne's, but it cannot be viewed from
religious preacher at once. Rembrandt `Daumier was good in a caricatural the same angle. There is nothing that you
dipped his pictures in a solution of way, selected by himself to be sure, but can take hold of in Matisse's colour, not
sentiment. If they are good, they are his irony was not so profound as Goya's. in the old sense of quality in colour. It is
good despite that. The spirit of Daumier is revived in the transparent, thin, perhaps, but when you
`There may be an association between Greek cartoonist Gallinis who has lately have left his pictures you will see that
Cezanne and Rembrandt. I do not know. done some very interesting themes in the they have taken hold of you.' •
The greatest scientific spirit of the manner of the cubists.
nineteenth century, greater in that sense `Gauguin is an impressionist and a From Arts and Decoration, New York,
than Cezanne is Seurat, who died at romanticist — a great force — Sept. 1915
the age of thirty-two. The twentieth
century is to be still more abstract, more
cold, more scientific. The American
character contains the elements of an
extraordinary art. Your life is cold and
scientific. Perhaps you are too young in
art. The traditions weigh too heavily
upon you, turn you into a sort of religious
fanatics as little yourselves as possible.
`In architecture the Florentine palaces
here have disappeared with the advent of
the skyscraper, with the call of utility
that means. Assuredly the Plaza Hotel
with its innumerable windows,
voraciously taking in light, is more
beautiful than the Gothic Woolworth
Building, but I like the immensity of the
latter.
`New York itself is a work of art, a
complete work of art. Its growth is
harmonious, like the growth of ripples
that come on the water when a stone has
been thrown into it. And I believe that
your idea of demolishing old buildings,
old souvenirs, is fine. It is in line with
that so much misunderstood manifesto
issued by the Italian Futurists which
demanded, in symbol only however,
though it was taken literally, the
destruction of the museums and

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