Editing Marcel Duchamp (section)

== Transition from art to chess ==
[[File:Man Ray, 1920, Three Heads (Joseph Stella and Marcel Duchamp), gelatin silver print, 20.7 x 15.7 cm, Museum of Modern Art.jpg|thumb|Man Ray, 1920, ''Three Heads'' ([[Joseph Stella]] and Marcel Duchamp, painting bust portrait of Man Ray above Duchamp), gelatin silver print, 20.7 × 15.7&nbsp;cm, [[Museum of Modern Art]], New York]]
In 1918, Duchamp took leave of the New York art scene, interrupting his work on the ''Large Glass'', and went to [[Buenos Aires]], where he remained for nine months and often played [[chess]]. He [[woodcarving|carved]] his own [[chess set]] from wood with help from a local craftsman who made the [[Knight (chess)|knights]]. He moved to Paris in 1919, and then back to the United States in 1920. Upon his return to Paris in 1923, Duchamp was, in essence, no longer a practicing artist. Instead, his main interest was chess, which he studied for the rest of his life to the exclusion of most other activities.

Duchamp is seen, briefly, playing chess with Man Ray in the short film ''[[Entr'acte (film)|Entr'acte]]'' (1924) by [[René Clair]]. He designed the 1925 poster for the Third French Chess Championship, and as a competitor in the event, finished at fifty percent (3–3, with two draws), earning the title of [[chess master]]. During this period his fascination with chess so distressed his first wife that she glued his pieces to the [[chessboard]]. Duchamp continued to play in the French Championships and in the [[Chess Olympiad]]s from 1928 to 1933, favoring [[hypermodernism (chess)|hypermodern]] openings such as the [[Nimzo-Indian]].

Sometime in the early 1930s, Duchamp reached the height of his ability, but realized that he had little chance of winning recognition in top-level chess. In the following years, his participation in chess tournaments declined, but he discovered [[correspondence chess]] and became a chess journalist, writing weekly newspaper columns. While his contemporaries were achieving spectacular success in the art world by selling their works to high-society collectors, Duchamp observed,  "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."<ref>Time Magazine. 10 March 1952</ref> On another occasion, Duchamp elaborated, "The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem. ... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."<ref>"Marcel Duchamp." Kynaston McShine.1989.</ref>

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| Duchamp's Problem with White to play<ref>{{cite web |title=Marcel Duchamp's Problem - Chess Forums |url=https://www.chess.com/forum/view/endgames/marcel-duchamps-problem |website=Chess.com |access-date=19 January 2018 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180119121038/https://www.chess.com/forum/view/endgames/marcel-duchamps-problem |archive-date=19 January 2018}}</ref>
}}

In 1932, Duchamp teamed with chess theorist [[Vitaly Halberstadt]] to publish ''L'opposition et cases conjuguées sont réconciliées'' ([[Opposition (chess)|Opposition]] and Sister Squares are Reconciled), known as [[corresponding squares]]. This treatise describes the [[Corresponding squares#Lasker-Reichhelm position|Lasker-Reichhelm position]], an extremely rare type of position that can arise in the [[Chess endgame|endgame]]. Using [[Enneagram (geometry)|enneagram]]-like charts that fold upon themselves, the authors demonstrated that in this position, the most Black can hope for is a [[Draw (chess)|draw]].

The theme of the "endgame" is important to an understanding of Duchamp's complex attitude toward his artistic career. Irish playwright [[Samuel Beckett]] was an associate of Duchamp, and used the theme as the narrative device for the 1957 play of the same name, ''[[Endgame (play)|Endgame]]''. In 1968, Duchamp played an artistically important chess match with avant-garde composer John Cage, at a concert entitled "Reunion". Music was produced by a series of photoelectric cells underneath the chessboard, triggered sporadically by normal game play.<ref name="toutfait.com"/>

On choosing a career in chess, Duchamp said, "If [[Bobby Fischer]] came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him—as if anyone could—but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted."<ref>Brady, Frank: ''Bobby Fischer: profile of a prodigy'', Courier Dover Publications, 1989; p. 207.</ref>

Duchamp left a legacy to chess in the form of an enigmatic endgame problem he composed in 1943. The problem was included in the announcement for Julian Levi's gallery exhibition ''Through the Big End of the Opera Glass'', printed on translucent paper with the faint inscription: "White to play and win". Grandmasters and endgame specialists have since grappled with the problem, with most concluding that there is no solution.<ref>Beliavsky, A & Mikhalchishin, A., ''Winning Endgame Technique'', Batsford, 1995.</ref>