Portrait of Chess Players
Marcel Duchamp (American, Born in France)
1911.
First Impressions:
At first glance this painting looks very confusing with many shapes all crowded together. After studying it for a little while, I started to see outlines of familiar shapes and figures. These were "subtle" in a way because they are not obviously shown. This reminds me of cubism. In this painting, I believe that there are a few optical illusions. The head of the guy on the left seems to be either facing his opponent (the other person), but it can alo appears to be facing the viewer (you). It is also very cool that the further you move back, the painting changes in a way. In the background, there seems to be various chess pieces. I can perceive the figures of a pawn, a bishop and a kind. To me the darker pieces appear to be playing out the role of a chess game. (zoom feature). There seems to be hidden objects in this painting and shapes that make up many figures. This painting is very interesting because of the way that it is made. Every time that I look at this painting, I can perceive a new, hidden object.
What I Have Learned (About the Author):
Chess was a great passion of Marcel Duchamp. He incorporated it into many of his works of art. He even said: "I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."1 In this painting, "each head is made up of many overlapping successive planes, with chess pieces floating in the indefinite spaces that surround them. This painting is in fact influenced by Duchamp's interest in cubism. Marcel Duchamp was born in 1887 in Northwest France. He was a painter and a mixed media artist.2 He was associated and influenced with Cubism, Dadaism, and Surrealism.3 "Duchamp's work is characterized by its humor, the variety and unconventionality of its media, and its incessant probing of the boundaries of art."4 All of the four oldest brothers in his family became artists. A short synopsis of The Chess Players is given to us by www.understandingduchamp.com. "In The Chess Players Duchamp explored the possibilities of Cubism. It shows two chess players at a table, in multiple views. In the center of the painting are a few shapes like chess pieces. The players are shown in different positions, suggesting the passage of time. Duchamp gave Cubism an idiosyncratic twist by introducing duration.
The players are weighing their options. One potential outcome results in the capture, by the player on the left, of an opposing piece, held in his hand near the bottom of the painting. A picture of minds engaged in the calculus of chess, this is an early exercise in another continuing interest in Duchamp’s art: depicting the intangible."www.understandingduchamp.com
In the 1968, Marcel Duchamp unfortunately died. Understandingduchamp.com did an excelent "summarization" of Marcel Duchamps' life.
Marcel Duchamp showed the way to a new kind of art. Compared with the varieties of visual expression that came before, this new art seeks to to engage the imagination and the intellect instead of just the eyes, embraces humor as a valid aesthetic component, and strives to portray invisible worlds instead of just visible ones.
Some of the most fruitful influences in modern art, from Surrealism to Abstraction to Pop to pure Conceptualism, have a common forefather in Marcel Duchamp.
Duchamp died peacefully in 1968. His ashes were interred with other family members in the Cimetière Monumental in Rouen. He wrote his own epitaph:
nice post!
ReplyDeleteduchamp rulez!