What was the Deal with Marcel Duchamp and Chess?

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It’s a question we asked ourselves recently in a Messy Nessy editorial meeting after finding yet another photograph of the 20th century artist playing chess in some unusual, avant-garde manner. Discovering a person’s hobby can be so deliciously voyeuristic. It’s a window into the way they switch-off from the world, and one made all the more intriguing by a person who seems, well, inseparable from their vocation. Sylvia Plath loved beekeeping, Da Vinci played the lyre and Marcel Duchamp? Well, it turns out he played chess. In fact he was so obsessed with playing chess, that after he stayed up all night during his honeymoon studying the game, his wife glued the pieces to his chessboard. They were divorced three months later. The game never ceased to enchant his brain and ultimately the Dadaist leader quit the art world and devoted the rest of his life to playing the game of life. “I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art – and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Che

What was the Deal with Marcel Duchamp and Chess? By Francky Knapp June 5, 2023 SHARE Facebook F Twitter T Pinterest P Marcel Duchamp directs a life-size chess game, 1956 It’s a question we asked ourselves recently in a Messy Nessy editorial meeting after finding yet another photograph of the 20th century artist playing chess in some unusual, avant-garde manner. Discovering a person’s hobby can be so deliciously voyeuristic. It’s a window into the way they switch-off from the world, and one made all the more intriguing by a person who seems, well, inseparable from their vocati

What was the Deal with Marcel Duchamp and Chess?

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