Editing Marcel Duchamp (section)

==Legacy==
Many critics consider Duchamp to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century,<ref>{{Cite book|first1=Calvin|last1=Tomkins|isbn=0805057897|title=Duchamp:A biography|quote=Regarded by many in the art world as the most influential artist of the century|date=15 March 1998|publisher=Henry Holt and Company }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dada-companion.com/duchamp/archive/aia_2000_nodelman.pdf|title=Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit. – Review – book review|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111004043913/http://www.dada-companion.com/duchamp/archive/aia_2000_nodelman.pdf|archive-date=4 October 2011|access-date=29 July 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.understandingduchamp.com/author/duchamp.html|title=Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717155830/http://www.understandingduchamp.com/author/duchamp.html|archive-date=17 July 2011|access-date=29 July 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/articles/graham/graham1.html|title=Duchamp & Androgyny: The Concept and its Context|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110919013720/http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/articles/graham/graham1.html|archive-date=19 September 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mfa.org/collections/publications/marcel-duchamp|title=Marcel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110809051945/http://www.mfa.org/collections/publications/marcel-duchamp|archive-date=9 August 2011}}</ref> and his output influenced the development of post–World War I [[Art of Europe|Western art]]. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of [[Western art history|Western art]] during this period.<ref name="TomkinsBio">Tomkins: ''Duchamp: A Biography''.</ref><!--I don't know what pages right now. I'll have to read the book again. -sparkit--> He challenged conventional thought about artistic processes and rejected the emerging art market, through subversive anti-art.<ref>Tomkins, 1966, p.38-39</ref> He famously dubbed a urinal art and named it ''[[Fountain (Duchamp)|Fountain]]''. Duchamp produced relatively few artworks and remained mostly aloof of the avant-garde circles of his time. He went on to pretend to abandon art and devote the rest of his life to chess, while secretly continuing to make art.<ref>Ian Chilvers & John Glaves-Smith, ''A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art''. Oxford University Press, p. 205</ref> In 1958 Duchamp said of creativity,

<blockquote>The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.<ref>Marcel Duchamp, from Session on the Creative Act, Convention of the American Federation of Arts, Houston, Texas, April 1957.</ref></blockquote>

Duchamp in his later life explicitly expressed negativity toward art. In a BBC interview with Duchamp conducted by [[Joan Bakewell]] in 1968 he compared art with religion, saying that he wished to do away with art the same way many have done away with religion. Duchamp goes on to explain to the interviewer that "the word art etymologically means to do", that art means activity of any kind, and that it is our society that creates "purely artificial" distinctions of being an artist.<ref>{{cite web|title=Joan Bakewell in conversation with Marcel Duchamp|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04826th|website=BBC Arts|year=1968|access-date=8 October 2016|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160926044032/http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04826th|archive-date=26 September 2016}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book | url = https://archive.org/details/marcelduchampart00rudo | url-access = registration | page = [https://archive.org/details/marcelduchampart00rudo/page/234 234] | quote = bbc 1966 interview duchamp joan bakewell. | title = Marcel Duchamp | publisher = MIT Press | isbn = 9780262610728 | last1 = Kuenzli | first1 = Rudolf Ernst | last2 = Naumann | first2 = Francis M | year = 1990 | df = dmy-all }}</ref>

A quotation erroneously attributed to Duchamp suggests a negative attitude toward later trends in 20th century art:

{{blockquote|This Neo-Dada, which they call New Realism, Pop Art, Assemblage, etc., is an easy way out, and lives on what Dada did. When I discovered the ready-mades I sought to discourage aesthetics. In Neo-Dada they have taken my readymades and found aesthetic beauty in them, I threw the bottle-rack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty.}}

However, this was written in 1961 by fellow Dadaist [[Hans Richter (artist)|Hans Richter]], in the second person, i.e. "You threw the bottle-rack...". Although a marginal note in the letter suggests that Duchamp generally approved of the statement, Richter did not make the distinction clear until many years later.<ref>[http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_5/articles/girst2/girst1.html "(Ab)Using Marcel Duchamp: The Concept of the Readymade in Post-War and Contemporary American Art"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060507233803/http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_5/articles/girst2/girst1.html |date=7 May 2006}} by Thomas Girst at toutfait.com, Issue 5, 2003.</ref>

Duchamp's attitude was more favorable, however, as evidenced by another statement made in 1964:

{{blockquote|Pop Art is a return to "conceptual" painting, virtually abandoned, except by the Surrealists, since [Gustave] Courbet, in favor of retinal painting... If you take a Campbell soup can and repeat it 50 times, you are not interested in the retinal image. What interests you is the concept that wants to put 50 Campbell soup cans on a canvas.<ref>Rosalind Constable, "New York's Avant-garde, and How It Got There", ''New York Herald Tribune'', May 17, 1964, p. 10, cited in Jennifer Gough-Cooper and Jacques Caumont, "Ephemerides on and about Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy, 1887–1968", in Pontus Hulten, ed., ''Marcel Duchamp'', Cambridge, MIT Press, 1993, entry for May 17, 1964. See also [[Campbell's Soup Cans#Interpretation]].</ref>}}

The [[Marcel Duchamp Prize|Prix Marcel Duchamp]] (Marcel Duchamp Prize), established in 2000, is an annual award given to a young artist by the [[Centre Georges Pompidou]]. In 2004, as a testimony to the legacy of Duchamp's work to the art world, a panel of prominent artists and art historians voted ''Fountain'' "the most influential artwork of the 20th century".<ref name="BBC 2010" /><ref>{{Cite news |last1=Higgins |first1=Charlotte |date=2004-12-02 |title=Work of art that inspired a movement ... a urinal |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/dec/02/arts.artsnews1 |access-date=2023-04-11 |issn=0261-3077}}</ref>

[[File:Marcel Duchamp (Rrose Selavy), Man Ray, 1920-21, Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Marcel Duchamp (Rrose Selavy) and Man Ray, ''[[Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette]]'', 1920–1921]]