Sydney College of the Arts

The University of Sydney

MASTERS OF VISUAL ARTS

2002

RESEARCH PAPER

RE-EVALUATING THE ART AND CHESS OF MARCEL DUCHAMP

by

Ian Randall J\a'cI ' 2.0CLL

i This volume is presented as a record of the work undertaken for the degree of Master of Visual Arts at Sydney College of the Arts.

2 Table of Contents

List of Illustrations 5

Thesis Summary 6

Chapter 1. Methodology: "Where is Duchamp... ?" 9

The Archetypal Search for Duchamp Where is Duchamp .. . ? Paradigm Shifts Duchamp and the Traversal of Paradigms Duchampian Chess

Chapter 2. Duchampian Chess in a Postmodern Historical Field 40

Duchamp the Chess "Idiot" Chess as a Modernist Historical Model The "Progress" of Modernity The transition into Postmodemity Scientific Developments as Reflecting the Postmodern Chess as a Metaphor for a 'New' Perception in Science: the nth-Dimension Duchamp's place in Postmodernism

Chapter 3. Chess "Praxis" from Modernism to Postmodernism 72

The Histories of Marcel Duchamp as Chess Player A History of Chess: A Philosophy A History of Chess: An Origin A History of Chess: Theory Hypermodem Chess Chess and Art "reconciled"

Chapter 4. "Chess as an art form" 109

A recent debate Developing a philosophy of chess Duchamp as Chess Artist

Chapter 5. A thematic study of chess in the art of Marcel Duchamp 141

The Chess Game (1910) Portrait of Chess Players (1911) The King and Queen (1912) Trebuchet / Trap (1917) Why No Sneeze Rose Selavy (1921), Poster for the Third French Chess Championship (1925), & Pocket Chess Set with Rubber Glove (1944) Nude Seated at a Chess Board

Plates 168 Bibligraphy 190

3 For Anna

my anti-Duchampian

Special thanks to

Christina Davidson

Dr. Eril Bailey

Professor Richard Dunn

Chris Hewett List of Illustrations

In order of reference

PLATE Page.

1 The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) 168 2 The Chess Games 169 3 Portrait of Chess Players 170 4 Two Nudes: One Strong, One Swift 171 5 The King and Queen Traversed by Nudes at High Speed 172 6 The King and Queen Traversed by Swift Nudes 173 7 The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes 174 8 1917 Studio Photograph 175 9 Trebuchet (Trap) 176 10 3 Draft Pistons 177 11 Unhappy Ready Made 178 12 Coffee Mill 179 13 Sad Young Man on a Train 180 14 Nude Descending a Staircase 181 15 1925 French Chess Championships 182 16 Why Not Sneeze Rose Selavy? 183 17 1963 Chess Performance 184 18 1919 Carved Chess Set 185 19 Chess Designs 186 20 Six Studies for Portrait of Chess Players 187 21 The Chess Players 188 22 Pocket Chess Set with Rubber Glove 189

5 Thesis Summary

The need for a re-evaluation of the art and chess of Marcel Duchamp came about when inconsistencies concerning the nature of chess and what was written about

Duchamp's involvement in the game were revealed during two unrelated studies.

When learning to play chess, I became interested in the historical development of opening theories. During this time I was attempting to read extensively on

Duchamp and the postmodern as part of my undergraduate degree.

It became apparent that many of the dominant theories about Duchamp's art made certain assumptions about chess that were false or misleading. The most immediate were theories about Duchamp quitting art to play chess, and that his works about chess were part of the erotic fascinations seen in his major works, The

Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even and Étant donnés.

The study opened up not only these anomalies but also a web of historical and theoretical relationships with other disciplines and paradigms. It became apparent that there were more convincing and compelling relationships between art and chess in the life of Duchamp than had been commonly presented.

Throughout Duchamp's life, chess was going through a major paradigm shift of its own. Duchamp made many a contribution to this as a player and theoretician.

Beyond the realms of art, it was not only chess that held Duchamp's interest, but also science, mathematics, and music. These fields, like that of chess, were also experiencing major historical shifts in theory and practice. The historical term 6 "Post-Modernism" is commonly used to express this shift. In unique ways,

Duchamp saw opportunities caused by these historical shifts to merge the theories and practices of these disciplines with that of art. Duchamp merged science with art, chess with art, music with art, but also science with chess, chess with mathematics, and chess with music.

The first two chapters of this thesis explore the misconceptions about chess, and present an exploration into paradigms as offering a solution. The solution looks into the historical shifts from the modern to the postmodern and how it was manifest in science, maths, chess and Duchamp's involvement therein.

The final three chapters look exclusively at chess: historically, philosophically, theoretically as well as Duchamp's contributions to the game. The thesis concludes by reflecting on Duchamp's works that specifically involve chess as a theme.

The significance of this thesis to contemporary art theory and practice is twofold;

Firstly, it offers a solution to the problems that continue to concern art and chess in the life and work of Duchamp. Secondly, as Duchamp is often cited as the "Father of Postmodernism" or arts "proto postmodernist," this thesis explores the multiple paradigms and disciplines that characterised Duchamp's own art practice.

Contemporary art practice takes for granted the merging and blending of art with the other. There is an inherent correlation to the way contemporary artists merge the practices and theories of art with a myriad of other elements, images, stories, cultures, traditions, practices, languages beyond that of art. Just as we traverse

7 with Duchamp into the paradigms of chess, science and mathematics through this thesis, contemporary art historians and theoriests attempt to follow contemporary artists into foreign realms and back again.

8 Chapter 1.

Methodology: "Where is Duchamp. .. ?"

The Archetypal Search for Duchamp: a personalised theoretical analogy

As I walked with ease down the well lit corridor of art, the space was filled with the echoes of my presence, my shoes sounding an authoritative tread with each step. The corridor, filled with many familiar works, continually affirmed my knowledge and gave me confidence in what I saw. The works fell, once again, into the well structured and systematic understanding of history that I was taught.

I knew what art was, what an artist does, and what art history represents.

However, today I am in search of Marcel Duchamp. I had tripped over his work many times when down this corridor. And had been forced into theoretical corners as a student when a tutor asked, "Well what about Duchamp?!" Surely he was an artist like any other that had walked this corridor. I was today attempting to find Duchamp for myself. I began by reading many stories, histories, and commentries. I found theorists, who write that as soon as we think we have found

Duchamp, he has disappeared from sight. These searches for Duchamp and previously known theories concerning Duchamp and his actions, all pointed to the one word: incommensurate.

Incommensurate: Not commensurable: having no common measure, or standard of comparison.1

1 Blair, The Macquarie Dictionary, UK, The Jacaranda Press, 1982, p.460 9 I began to formulate my own theories. I was not going to let Duchamp win this game of hide and seek. Yet, ultimately my research led me to similar conclusions: Duchamp presented a labyrinth of complexity and contradiction. Duchamp was an artist whose work was made up of many different aspects that could not be brought together, or understood by the one concept. Aspects that upset, subverted, and disrupted the people who walked in this corridor and the way art was seen. At times Duchamp acted like a "proper" artist, producing very palatable

Impressionist oil paintings like Church at Blainville (1902). He was a curator of exhibitions and also a generous patron to the Arts. Yet at other times, Duchamp was anything but "proper," with his 1917 act of submitting a urinal into an open sculpture exhibition and signing it R.Mutt; as well as a major work upon glass and another behind a locked door. The more I searched for Duchamp the more elusive he became. Through my frustration I began to pen a list hoping to find a link or a key that could reconcile all of the aspects of Duchamp's life and work. . . with no result. I wrote,

Duchamp was French, American, a language teacher, librarian, philosopher, ascetic, bohemian, recluse, exhibitionist, An-artist, Anti Artist, film maker, musician, French National Chess Master, gambler, playboy, neglectful and devoted husband, father, painter, anti painter, sculptor, installationist, impressionist, cubist, surrealist, dadaist, cartoonist, writer, scientist, mathematician, satirist, . . .

As I picked up my books, my theories, my discouraged self, and turned to walk out of the corridor of Art, I noticed a small pocket chess set that Duchamp had made. Memories of playing chess with my father stirred within me. How I would love to have a game of chess with Duchamp! It was then that I noticed a door close to me that said "The Corridor of Chess." I thought to myself that at some point Duchamp must have walked out of the corridor of Art through this very door. Yet this door was not the only door Duchamp could have passed through. I

10 saw doors that led to the corridors of Maths, Science, Philosophy, and others, doors that, at one stage, Duchamp opened and walked through, which led out of the corridor of Art. I had not thought to search beyond the safety of Arts corridor. I could not just walk into other corridors, as I did not know the language or the customs of these corridors. Yet if I wanted my game of chess with Duchamp I could not remain in this corridor any longer. So I held firmly to Duchamp's pocket chess set, and slowly opened the door into the corridor of Chess. I remembered that Duchamp had given permission to a group of children to play games at the opening of "First papers of Surrealism" (New York, 1942). Quoting the words of the children I said as I entered the corridor of chess, "Mr. Duchamp said I could play here."2

2 Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp. Thames and Hudson, London, 1997, p.515 11 "Where is Duchamp... ?

. .. Between mysticism and games, between spiral movements and chessboards, between silent gramophones, records and readymade objects, between an ascetic studio and a bohemian world, Duchamp is moving endlessly, with precision and astounding self- assurance, to and fro, from the centre to the periphery of senso- morphological experiments backwards and forwards between Paris and New York, he is . . . the enigma of the sphinx.”3

During the 'search' for any historical figure the art historian4 will encounter many degrees of incongruence. The passing of time hides the historical figure from the art historian. The separation between the historian and their subject is a distance the historian attempts to bridge via their chosen approach or methodology. An art historian must deeply consider both their chosen historical methodology and their final representation of their subject. A close link must be maintained between the historian and the theorist5, as the historian will always adopt a particular methodology and theoretical emphasis. Furthermore, the art historian must look, as much as possible, to their (hidden) subject to inform and guide the process of their investigation. For the imposing of a dominant historical theory or methodology has the potential to be incompatible with their chosen historical figures. The historian must not be the servant to their methodology but to their historical subject. Each time the art historian presents a historical figure, there will be aspects of the figure's life which will not fit neatly into a totalising representation. As their words, actions, documents, works, lovers and friends can

3 Nicholas Calas, "Cheat to Cheat," View, ser. 5 no. 1 March 1945:p.20T 4 The Art Historian: "one who works with, and has faith in, the rational process of art history. The art historian's task is to examine and to explain why art objects look the way they do." Fernie, Art History and its methods: a critical anthology, London, Phaidon Press, 1996, p.326-8 5 The Art Theorist: "one who examines what is often unacknowledged or taken for granted and attempts to explain a number of apparently disparate factors." (Ibid) 12 never conform to one dominant unifying theory or representation. Thus the art historian and theorist must ask two questions: how does one attain 'understanding' of an historical figure, and how are the historian and theorist to represent the historical figure?

Commonly art historians in search of Duchamp not only meet with the usual complications of historical distance, methodology and representation but also a particularly "elusive" historical figure. This understanding of Duchamp is caused by many factors. This thesis will argue that the inability of art historians to move beyond the paradigm of art has lead to a large degree of incommensurate aspects in historical investigation, methodology, and the representation of Duchamp as a historical figure. For Duchamp, as an art historical figure, traversed through many paradigms during his life, and did not confine himself to the paradigm of art. Yet commonly, art historians have viewed Duchamp from the comfort of the paradigm of art when attempting to understand incongruent aspects of Duchamp's life.

Art historians have applied their art theories to Duchamp's involvement in paradigms beyond the realms of art, as though Duchamp's involvement in art and these other arenas was one and the same. The art historian Arturo Schwarz is an example of this.6 Schwarz's historical perspective has had much influence on the way Duchamp the chess player and his works about chess are understood. He presents a historical meta-narrative of Duchamp focused primarily upon the thematic development of The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors even (Large Glass)

(1923) (PLATE 1). Here Schwarz applies this narrative of Duchamp's thematic genealogy and creation of the Large Glass to all aspects of Duchamp's life including his involvement in chess.

6 Schwarz, 1997 13 But by this time Duchamp's development was on a trajectory of its own, foreshadowed by his painting Bride, in which he had sought to liberate himself from all previously existing schools. A masterpiece in its own right, Bride, painted in 1912, is Duchamp's last conventional painting and marks, indeed, his farewell to the concept of art as it was understood at the time. 7

. . . the cycle of works that led to Bride. 8

This work [Dulcinea] points toward the representation of movement in Nude Descending a Staircase: and the gradual divestment of her clothing is another instance of Duchamp's preoccupation with the theme of disrobing, which would culminate in The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. 9

The extraordinary logical and formal continuity of the works of this period becomes clear when seen in the following light: the Young Man of the 1911 Young Man and Girl in Spring is, in fact, the Nude in Nude Descending a Staircase of 1912: the Nude is transformed into the King in King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes: and subsequently the King becomes the mythical Bachelor of the Large Glass. Similarly, we shall recognise the Young Girl of the 1911 painting in the Queen surrounded by swift nudes, who in turn is transformed first into the Virgin, then into the Bride whom we see in the homonymous painting, in Passage of Virgin to Bride, and eventually in the Large Glass as well.10

These quotations are examples of Schwarz's emphasis of a progression of works towards a unifying summation. However, this thesis will argue that Duchamp was not on one path alone but on many. By 1912 Duchamp had painted works not on the thematic "trajectory" towards Bride or The Large Glass, but works which were concerned with his passion for chess. For example; The Chess Game (1910) (PLATE 2), Portrait of Chess Players (1911) (PLATE 3), Two Nudes: One Strong and One Swift (1912) (PLATE 4), The King and Queen Traversed by Nudes at High Speed (1912) (PLATE 5), The King and Queen Traversed by Swift Nudes (1912) (PLATE 6),

The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes (1912) (PLATE 7). These works listed here were concerned with Duchamp's investigations into chess. However,

7 Schwarz, 1997, p.21 8 ibid, p.19 9 ibid 10 ibid, p.106 14 Schwarz's dominant monolithic theory draws these works on chess into the erotic realms of the Bride/Glass.

Although Duchamp has confirmed more than once that his King and Queen were a chess king and queen, we have already seen that these two characters also seem to step right out of their alchemical models. We may also recognise in the King and Queen the characters of folktales and childhood fantasies in which they regularly stand for an idealised self and a mythical love - object. The fact that both the King and Queen in these sketches and in the painting are traversed or surrounded by Nudes at high speed indicates their common erotic fantasies.11

Schwarz's Chess / Large Glass agenda produced many subsequent investigations into Duchamp's chess by art theorists such as Hopkins (1998), Bailly (1996), and Simons (1993). This misunderstanding of Duchamp as chess player, by art historians and theorists, is due to the application of an inappropriate theoretical and historical position that is unable to recognise the existence of non-art (chess) perspectives on an art historical figure.

This thesis will argue that Duchamp's artistic investigations into chess did not have this particular dominant erotic agenda. But also, Duchamp's investigations into chess were multi-layered involving a number of perspectives. Duchamp was engaged as a chess player at master level, a chess theorist, and also with the relationship between art and chess, science and mathematics. Apart from the above misreading, the most common historical misrepresentation of Duchamp and chess was that he "quit" art to pursue chess which is exemplified by the commonly quoted statement,

. . . he gave up the public production of art in favour of chess ..."

12

11 ibid, p. 114 12 Hughes, Shock of the New, London 1991, p.52 15 This common representation of Duchamp is a simplification of the complex relationship between his art and chess. Art historians have considered Duchamp's movement into the paradigm of chess as yet another inscrutable piece of the mystery that surrounds Duchamp. The representing of Duchamp as an incommensurate art historical figure has become the theoretical endpoint in the

'search' for, and the historical representation of, Marcel Duchamp. The further the art-theorist attempts to represent the art-historical Duchamp the more elusive, as

Calas suggests, he is said to become.

Marcel Duchamp's elusiveness or, as Amelia Jones presents it in her text titled

"Postmodernism and the Engendering of Marcel Duchamp,"13 his 'detachment' from the art world is an important aspect of the figure of Duchamp. Jones argues that Art historians failure to 'locate' Duchamp is symptomatic of both modernist art-historical and theoretical methodological tradition coupled with Duchamp’s own attempts of subversion.

. . . I attribute a certain knowing agency to Duchamp in describing his disruptions of authorship and modernist art-historical interpretive paradigms, but do so in a highly self-conscious way.14

The failure of modernist methodology fed into or created the 'dominant mythology' of Duchamp's 'slipperiness' as an incommensurable art-historical figure. A slipperiness that, to some historians, continues to confirm the myth of Duchamp's genius.15 Modernist practices of art historical and theoretical investigation rely upon empirical assumptions, objective discoveries, and singular

'unified' representations. One major event pinpointed by Jones as a catalyst for

13 Jones, Postmodernism and the Engendering of Marcel Duchamp, Cambridge University Press, 1994 14 Ibid, p.65-6 15 Ibid, p.66-7 16 common perceptions of Duchamp's "withdrawal" or "quitting" was his rejection of painting after 1918. From this point onwards Duchamp seemed only to re-appear in the art world momentarily and then disappeared again. Duchamp re-appeared in 1923 with the Large Glass and then vanished again. In an 1959 article titled "The

Silence of Marcel Duchamp" Andrew Forge writes:

The more closely the contradiction is stated, the more impossible it becomes to do anything about it. The answer is silence. Duchamp has done almost nothing since finishing the Large Glass almost thirty years ago.16

Yet when the art-historian looks into this "nothing" of Duchamp, one finds a little more "something" than would at first appear. Jones says:

*> Duchamp's silence was always complex, seductive and cleverly equivocal; he was speaking under his breath, or out of the side of his mouth (with his tongue in his cheek), but was never actually quiet.17

Duchamp was never actually quiet for he was always secretly working on "something." At the same time he was subversive to interviewers, friends and scholars about his art activities. Jones notes that this aspect of Duchamp's character was present from 1923, after his Large Glass, and that this was particularly prevalent during the 60's as Duchamp claimed "non-activity" while he worked secretly on his last major work Étant donnés. The more his art career developed the more he manipulated those looking for him, making the desire to

find him even more potent. However, Jones claims that Duchamp was never

actually 'absent' or 'silent' but was challenging what it meant to be an "Artist" and

16 Forge, The Silence of Marcel Duchamp, Listener, Nov 5, 1959: p.775-6 17 Jones 1994, p.67 17 to work in the paradigm of art. More to the point, Jones argues Duchamp's 'silence' was nothing more than Duchamp's own 'fabrication.'18

Duchamp's art making activities through the 1930’s, 1940's and 1950's exposed his 'silence' as a fabrication. They testify to Duchamp's role as artist and authority, even as he subverted authorship, and suggested that Duchamp, like any subject negotiating a social environment, experimented with various strategies to manipulate public perceptions to his own ultimate gain.19

It would seem that Jones has finally found and "checkmated" Duchamp. But Jones

continues to present this as only one aspect of the rich legacy of Duchampian incommensurability, as Duchamp's role as the subversive artist and anti author, continues to disrupt the understandings and presentations of Duchamp within the paradigm of art.

Duchamp's self-promoted images of 'indifference' and 'silence' and his incommensurable activities is only one of the most powerful examples of the many contradictions informing the Duchampian author-function. . . [understanding Duchamp] is not to be located within Duchamp as living subject at all. It resides rather at multiple sites; in the gaps between the maker, the making of the object, the object as it exists in the world, and the perception, reception, and codification of the object through interpretive analysis . . . Duchamp takes place in schisms between idea and expression of the idea, between his actions, statements, and products and our readings of these. 20

Duchamp remained elusive, and the objects he created were not able to be viewed as his predecessors viewed other works of art. The theories and histories within

the paradigm of art were not able to fully contain the scope of the Duchampian

18 {Ibid, p.76) 19 (Ibid, p. 92) 20 (Ibid, p.103) 18 legacy. Hence, there are many elements of Duchamp's life and work that continue to elude the art theorist in the search for Duchamp.

Although Jones establishes Duchamp as playing the game of deception down the "corridor of Art", Jones acknowledges a point when Duchamp was clearly 'absent' and 'permanently [silent];'

"Duchamp has turned to chess" 21

It was here that Jones, and others,* * consider Duchamp to cease to be an an 'artist,' and to walk entirely out of the corridor of Art and into the corridor of Chess: the artist became the chess player. With this move, Duchamp is understood to have withdrawn from the paradigm of art, chess becomes the, ultimate silence and separation. For this reason, Duchamp's involvement in chess holds little interest to theorists. Jones writes little of Duchamp's chess involvement, briefly stating that;

Duchamp stayed in the US off and on between 1915 and 1925, at which time he returned to Europe to devote his energies to the international chess circuit until 1932.22 and finally;

After a brief period from 1927-1932, during which he devoted himself almost exclusively to playing chess, Duchamp threw his energies into publishing a book on the chess endgame with Vitaly Halberstadt, L'opposition et les cases conjuguées sont réconciliées.23

21 Ibid, p.67 * Baily, Tomkins, Hughes, Hopkins, Masheck 22 Ibid, p.71 23 Ibid, p.86 19 At the chessboard Duchamp becomes truly 'silent,' a state of apparent irrelevance to the art historian and theorist. Yet the role or activities of the art historian and theorist needs to be able to contend with the art historical figure that was involved in a paradigm as seemingly dissimilar to art, as chess. One solution to the problem of representing the historical figure has come from postmodern approaches to history.

The postmodern historian or theorist has solved the problem by not attempting to

'find' and 'represent' the historical figure as a unified singularity. Through postmodern investigations and representations, Marcel Duchamp becomes not one art-historical figure but many. The postmodern art-theorist understands the complexity of Duchamp as an artist and anti artist, who moved through a number of art 'styles', rejected traditional art practices, yet subsequently and contradictorily adopted many established roles within the art world and furthermore even 'played' with concepts of his own gender and identity. Thus, within the artworld Duchamp . . . "is always on the verge of disappearing and remerging elsewhere."24

Although the representation of Marcel Duchamp as 'many' assists the art historian in the process of historical representation and methodology, it also continues the segmentation of the various aspects of Duchamp's life. This is a particularly convenient and simple representation of the relationship between art and chess in the life of Duchamp. Chess is either used as evidence of how Duchamp continues to elude the art historian, or through the use of a unifying theory, that we can

understand Duchamp's chess through the language, values and perspectives of the paradigm of art.

2Albid, p.3 20 Art historian Pierre Cabanne, who conducted a series of interviews with Duchamp, wrote about Duchamp's continual attempts to avoid this definition. Cabanne, understanding that Duchamp attempted to distance himself as a conscious act from those seeking him and the artworks he produced, wrote,

Some saw him as an artist, others as an engineer (a term he liked). For some he was a subversive, for others merely lucid. What can one say about a man who spent his entire life evading definition? A critic approaching the life and work of Marcel Duchamp needs to cultivate an elegance of his own, a sense of humour and even a hint of condescension. Evasion exists to establish a distance between subject and pursuer. It reflects the desire to live, perhaps even to act, without justifying oneself. It implies that opportunities and emotions can be treated with suspicion, money with indifference, and reputation (others will see to that) with circumspection. There remains the reductive pleasure of puns and epigrams with which to deflate anyone taking seriously the repertory of behaviour listed above.25

Andre Breton suggested an alternative way of understanding Duchamp's inability to be defined by the paradigm of art as evidence of his status of genius. Breton, who declared him, "the most intelligent man of the 20th century,"26 shifted his focus from what characterised Duchamp as genius, to the failings of the paradigm of art. Cabanne addresses Breton's declaration in his interviews with Duchamp, who replied,

The word "intelligence" is the most elastic one can invent. There is a logical or Cartesian form of intelligence, but I think Breton meant to say something else. . . Breton and I are men of the same order - we share a community of vision, which is why I think I understand his idea of intelligence: enlarged, drawn out, extended, inflated if you wish.. . 27

Breton saw Duchamp's extension beyond the narrow established order of art into new territories. To use Cabanne's words, "you yourself have enlarged, inflated,

25 Cabanne, Duchamp and Co., Paris, Terrail, 1997, p.8 26 Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, New York. Viking Press, 1971, p.16 27 Ibid, 21 and exploded the limits of [art] creation according to your own "intelligence."28 Duchamp understood that Breton's perspective concerned the limitations of art that they had both experienced. Duchamp then elaborated with Cabanne on the narrow definition of art and his subversive theories which were critical of the artist as "creator." Breton's view suggests that Duchamp's "intelligence" and

"mystery," which makes him unattainable, is due to the limitations of the

paradigm of art to move from its narrow understandings.29 The enigma of Duchamp is the product of Duchamp's deliberate actions, the limitations of the

paradigm of art, and sustaining myths of Duchamp's 'genius'. This results in an

historical representation unable to deal with such elements as his relationship

with chess and Duchamp's own artworks about chess. These 'disappearances' have caused, and continue to cause, a conflict of culture, language, role and function of the artist "within" the artworld itself.30

The representation of Duchamp's relationship with chess is symptomatic of art historians inability to move beyond the paradigm of art, and to follow him into the paradigm of chess. For it is through traversing through the paradigms that the historian and theorist is able to better comprehend the deep interest that Duchamp held for the game. Art historians and theorists need to look beyond an incommensurable conclusion and to ask questions concerning the methodology they have used. Different expectations must be placed on the art historian and theorist, a new way of thinking and a shift in methodology and theory.

Through investigations into the paradigm of art and into chess, this thesis will

'locate' Duchamp and present many important aspects of Duchamps

'disappearance/ Furthermore, this process will demonstrate the workings of

28 Ibid 29Ibid, p.16-17 30 Jones, p.103 22 Duchamp's interest in multiple paradigms, like that of science and mathematics. Thus this thesis will treat chess as an important springboard into the life and work of Marcel Duchamp beyond the point of representing Duchamp as an incommensurable art-historical figure. The relationship between art and chess, draws the art theorist into many aspects of the historical figure Marcel Duchamp; the readymade, aesthetics, scientific investigations into the nth or 4th dimensions, (which dominated cubist thought, creating the theoretical structure for the Large

Glass, and notes contained in the 'Green Box'), the use of chess as a literal or symbolic theme, the rejection of the 'retinal' or the 'visual' over the conceptual, hypermodern chess praxis and theory, and chess as an art form. Duchamp's move to chess will not be shown as presenting an absence from art but rather a continuum when one considers the nature of art as a paradigm. If one is able to reconcile Duchampian art practice and chess, one must ask what will we learn from the relationship between these seemingly separate intellectual paradigms? The art theorist and historian will need to leave the corridor of art and "play" games down the corridor of chess and other intellectual paradigms. And in order to do this we must walk through the same doors through which Duchamp walked.

23 Paradigm Shifts

. I don't want to be pinned down to any position. My position is the lack of position, but of course, you can't even talk about it, the minute you talk you spoil the whole game.' - Marcel Duchamp

1969.

To conclude an historical representation of Marcel Duchamp as an 'enigma' raises many concerns about historical and theoretical methodology. The art theorist and historian needs to shift beyond an incommensurate endpoint. For this endpoint reveals the way art historians and theorists have narrowly defined and represent Duchamp and the paradigm of art. The endpoint calls for a new way of thinking about many aspects of Duchamp-as-artist. It calls for a paradigm-shift in the way

Duchamp is represented, theorised and historicised. Regardless of what Duchamp said about the close relationship between the paradigms of art and chess, art historians and theorists have continually considered it 'outside,' and therefore irrelevant. It is this view of ,art that needs to be challenged, as it inhibits our understanding of historical figures like Duchamp who seemingly moved outside of the walls of art to 'disappear' without trace. Theorists need to consider the nature of the paradigm of art and how the concept of the paradigm itself offers a new way of looking at the discipline of art, in an attempt to come to terms with those, like Duchamp who inhabit and traverse the boundaries of other disciplines.

Art theorists, like Arturo Schwarz, have commonly acknowledged the links between art and chess, as it is difficult to ignore the many statements by Duchamp that speak of this close relationship between the two paradigms. Schwarz sees that Duchamp as fundamentally and ultimately an artist to be understood from art's standpoint. Art practices, languages and values are limited when theorising about other paradigms. For example attempting to apply the language, values,

24 perspectives and theories of Duchampian art onto the world of Duchampian chess (in an attempt to formulate a Duchampian meta-theory) will only lead to a misunderstanding of Duchamp's engagement with chess. As though the paradigm of art and chess were one and the same. Yet Duchamp cannot be pinned down so easily, for at different times he adopted, rejected and blended the practices, languages and values of various intellectual paradigms. Art theorists become unstuck when Duchamp walks into a paradigm that is foreign. Theorists have done their best to make a link based upon arts perspectives. As will be later explored in detail, a few such theorists have sought to build a bridge between images and diagrams in Duchamp's 1932 text on chess endgame theory, L'Opposition et les cases conjuguées sont réconciliées (Opposition and Sister Squares are

Reconciled) and The Large Glass. For Duchamp, in writing this chess book, left the paradigm of art by completely adopting the language and customs of the paradigm of chess. Thus, Duchamp treated the paradigms of art and chess as distinctly separate paradigms. The work was specifically written for an elite theoretical chess audience and in no way is accommodating of the art paradigm. Although there are some visual similarities between many of the diagrams contained in this book and Duchamp's Large Glass, it is difficult to make any substantial connection between the Large Glass and L'opposition. The theorist falls once again into a trap when applying theories of art to all aspects of Duchamp's life. The paradigm of art has continually failed to account for the incongruent aspects as they frequently involve Duchamp's traversal into another paradigm. Yet, if the art theorist looks into the aspects of Duchamp's life that are considered incongruent without attempting to formulate a meta-theory, or looking only from the paradigm of art, a greater understanding of Duchamp as an historical figure will be gained. The creation of one all encompassing theory is unable to unite all aspects of Duchamp's life and work. In the case of chess, in the life and work of

25 Duchamp, meta theories have distorted or hidden the anomalies presented to the paradigm of art.

The concept of the paradigm is commonly understood as representing a system of thought and inquiry, a model and way of working that is shared by a group of people. At the same time a paradigm is a community of people who share common values. It is important to understand that a paradigm is both the set of rules that are layed down by a discipline that regulate practice and also the shared values of that community. Within a discipline, like art, there will always be differences in the methods and specific procedures used by those who belong to it.

When these methods and procedures are used to define the paradigm itself it can cause divisions and place huge limitations on the nature of the discipline. Thus it is important to look also to shared values. Commonly historians and theorists have looked to the methods or practices of historical figures to determine which paradigm the historical figure belonged to, rather than to the values the historical figure held. This approach has continually caused misrepresentations of historical figures, who have subverted traditional practices. Such figures are commonly shown as practicing outside or apart from their chosen discipline. The difficulty of looking to the practices of historical figures is that there will always be ambiguities in the way shared values are translated into practice.31 An historical figure may share the values of a paradigm and yet be practicing in a manner that the paradigm itself does not recognise. Looking to the practices of the historical figure led to misrepresentations of historical figures like Duchamp. For Duchamp continually shared the values of the paradigm of art even though his practise was not shared by others. Furthermore, Duchamp presents a paradoxical relationship of paradigms as the artist in the paradigm of chess and the chess master in the paradigm of art. Therefore, art historians researching art historical figures must

31 Kuhn, Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research? Chicago, University of Chicago, 1970 p.44 26 look to the values that they hold and not necessarily to the historical figure's method of practice.

It is common for paradigms to acknowledge a legitimate set of laws and rules and to overlook the values, attitudes, languages and philosophies.

a paradigm is a framework of thought within which scientific inquiry [thought] takes place in any given era. Thus scientists are constrained by institutional and peer pressure to conduct inquiry within the guidelines laid down by current accepted theories and their prescribed models of practice. This is what Kuhn regards to as 'normal science'. ..32

The notion of 'normal science' has also proved very powerful in art resulting in artists and their practices being rejected by the paradigm. Historically institutions have maintained authority presenting the title of "Artist” to those deemed worthy and "Art" to the objects and images sanctioned. A clear example of this was the French Salon, under the jury system, during the 19th century. However when art is considered a paradigm or a community, bound by common values, and not a set of procedures and methods of practice, then Duchamp's life and his work can be presented in a new way.

. . . shared values can be important determinants of group behaviour even though the members of the group do not all apply them in the same way. (If that were not the case, there would be no special philosophic problems about value theory or aesthetics.) Men did not all paint alike during the periods when representation was a primary value, but the developmental pattern of the plastic arts changed drastically when that value was abandoned.33

The theorist who has written most on the concept of the paradigm and the paradigm shift is scientist Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn presents two components of the paradigm in

32 Sim, Critical Dictionary of Postmodern Thought, London, Icon, 1998 p.333 33 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1962, p.186 27 his 1962 text The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn says of the term paradigm;

A paradigm is what members of a scientific community share, and conversely a scientific community consists of men who share a paradigm.34

A paradigm is able to represent an entire discipline, and at the same time represent the shared values and practices of that discipline. A paradigm as community: a paradigm as shared values. Kuhn presents the history of the scientific paradigms as revealing a diverse and complex group of communities with specific perspectives, values, histories, cultures, languages and institutions that are continually moving through states of 'crises' and 'restoration', all the while within the one broad paradigm of science.35 Kuhn understands the historical movement of scientific development, for all paradigms, are characterised by the paradigm shift. Paradigm shifts occur through critical levels of anomalies that disrupts the common practices, methods, and laws of the paradigm, causing a revolutionary change of approach.

Let us then assume that crises are a necessary precondition for the emergence of novel theories and ask next how scientists respond to their existence. Part of the answer, as obvious as it is important, can be discovered by noting first what scientists never do when confronted by even severe and prolonged anomalies. Though they may begin to lose faith and then to consider alternatives, they do not renounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis.. . . once it has achieved the status of paradigm, a scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternative candidate is available to take its place.. . 36

A shift can only occur if there are new practices that address the anomalies. Kuhn presents that the new set of practices are not 'better' than another but constitute

34 Ibid 35 Masterman, The Nature of a Paradigm, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, L.Musgrave, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1970, p.88 36 Kuhn, 1962, p.77 28 another way of understanding and practicing.37 Within the historical and theoretical study of Marcel Duchamp, chess continues to operate as an anomaly.

Art historians and theorists continually have difficulty in representing Duchamp's relationship with chess.

What we must ask of Duchamp and his relationship to chess is, did he value chess in the same way as he did art? Did he look upon this activity as he did his art work? If Duchamp shared the values of art, when in the paradigm of chess, then there are no grounds for the much held theory that Duchamp "quit" art to play chess. The answer is clearly not to be simplistic about Duchamp, for at various times he held onto the values of many different paradigms, and operated in a complex web of relationships. Duchamp's approach to chess, at times, was identical to that of art, as he conceptualised and practiced chess through the paradigm of art. Duchamp's perception of chess as art is clearly demonstrated through the language and the illustrations he uses.

"And why . . . isn't my chess playing an art activity? A chess game is very plastic. You construct it. It’s mechanical sculpture and with chess one creates beautiful problems and that beauty is made with the head and hands."38

"A game of chess is a visual and plastic thing, and if it isn’t geometric in the static sense of the work, it is mechanical, since it moves; it's a drawing, . . . In chess there are some extremely beautiful things in the domain of movement, but not in the visual domain. It’s the imagining of the movements or of the gesture that makes the beauty, in this case. It's completely in one's grey matter."

39

37 Sim, p.298-99 38 Avedon, Observations: Marcel Duchamp interview by Truman Capote, 1959, p.55 39 Cabanne 1971, p.18-19 29 "In fact, when you have a chess game, it is a little as when you sketch something, or as if you are building the machinery that will make you win or lose. The competitive aspect of the game is irrelevant, but the game itself is very plastic, it is probably that which attracted me." 40

In the light of these comments, Duchamp introduces many aspects concerning his interest in chess; the relationship between the physical, or plastic, realms and the intellectual; the kinetic sculptural elements; the beauty of the movements within the mind; but most importantly, he looks at chess in the same way as he looks at art. Duchamp's aesthetic insights into chess are theoretically potent and penetrating, and his representation of chess in art, demonstrate his ability to successfully navigate and communicate across distinct and separate paradigms. Images of Duchamp at his chess board, of which there are many, can be seen as Duchamp at his proverbial easel.

Not only did Duchamp traverse into the paradigm of chess but also the paradigm of science. Through the avant-garde of scientific theory Duchamp became interested in the notion of the 4th or nth dimension. Other artists, like Picasso and Braque, were interested in the representation of further dimensions. Duchamp, having traversed into the paradigm of science brought back to the paradigm of art new theories, practices and languages which informed his art making, leading to fundamental aspects of the Large Glass. It was through the application of nth dimension theories that Duchamp was able to express the intellectual world of the chess player within the paradigm of art (this aspect will be explored in further chapters). Duchamp rejected the traditional practices and methods of rendering and representing objects in three dimensions. Instead, in his early Cubist paintings like The King and Queen Surrounded by swift Nudes and in the Large Glass he

40 Sweeney, Interview with artist, 1955 30 adopted contemporary scientific theories concerning higher dimensions, the nth dimension, These new scientific theories represented a significant paradigm shift in method and practice for art and science. Duchamp and the proponents of the nth or 4th dimension met much criticism over their 'faith' in the new perspectives that rejected Euclid and the established foundational geometries. Mathematicians like that of Henry Poincare, whose theories specifically influenced Duchamp, considered that established empirical methodology was only 'convenient' for certain approaches and could not be applied in all circumstances. Poincare argued that since empirical science was unable to 'see' or certify to the existence of higher dimensions it does not justify the conclusion that they do not exist.41

Duchamp spoke to Pierre Cabanne concerning avant garde science, the fourth dimension and their relationship to the Large Glass saying,

Duchamp: . . . perspective was very important. The 'Large Glass" constitutes a rehabilitation of perspective, which had then been completely ignored and disparaged. For me, perspective became absolutely scientific.. Cabanne: It was no longer a realistic perspective.

Duchamp: No. It's a mathematical, scientific perspective.

Cabanne: Was it based on calculations? Duchamp: Yes, and on dimensions. These were the important elements. . . .Simply, I thought of the idea of a projection, of an invisible fourth dimension, something you couldn't see with your eyes. Since I found that one could make a cast shadow from a three dimensional thing, any object whatsoever-just as the projecting of the sun on the earth makes two dimensions-I thought that, by simple intellectual analogy, the fourth dimension could project an object of three dimensions, or, to put it another way, any three-dimensional object, which we see dispassionately, is a projection of something four-dimensional, something we're not familiar with. 42

41 Henderson, The Fourth Dunension and Non-Euclidian Geometry in Modern Art, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1983, p.17 42 Cabanne 1971, p.38 -40 31 Thus to understand works like the Large Glass the theorist is called to enter the paradigm of science. This is no longer Duchamp as artist viewed by the art historian but calls for a separate paradigm of science, to inform the work.

In seeking to counter these ideas we should reject the idea that all historical writing is distortion, because if it is then there is no point in trying to correct it. 43

Marcel Duchamp has been described, through a modernist art historical perspective, as an "enigma." The art historian and theorist Eric Fernie in 1996 called upon other historians to create a paradigm shift in the art historical criticism that 'underpins' modernist art historical methodology. Fernie argues that art historians and theorists need to investigate the relationship between the 'aesthetic realm' and the wider social paradigm or context. The 'aesthetic realm,' represented by the narrow focus of modernist Greenbergian art historical investigation, is not adequate as the only field of investigation for the art historian and theorist. Fernie argues that any work of art needs to be understood from a wider perspective, to incorporate social, historical, intellectual and cultural paradigms. Jones likewise understands that the years of 'interpretive discourses' have come about through many historical intellectual shifts, of Modernism, Postmodernism and theories of Avant-garde practice.44 Thus the representation of the art historical figure needs to be viewed from a wider perspective than from merely within the paradigm of art.45 The art theorist and historian who use modernist methodology, and continues to deem Marcel Duchamp as 'Artist' (singular) will miss the complexities about Duchamp.

Fernie argues that when looking at any work of art one needs to understand that the meaning of the work of art is not contained within the art object itself but lies

43 Fernie, p. 314 44 Jones, p. 103 45 Fernie, p.269 32 elsewhere, "beyond or behind its surface."46 Let this meaning of Duchamp's work be found within the paradigms that brought the work into existence, the paradigm that contains the work of art, the paradigm that engages with Duchamp's works of art.

In creating an understanding of Marcel Duchamp and his relationships to various intellectual paradigms we need to look to the historical and theoretical paradigm of the Postmodern. As has been argued, the postmodern art historical presentation of the historical figure is understood not as monolithic or as a biographical account but is rather a fluid figure moving within an extensive arena.

A postmodern historical figure is contained within a variety of paradigms incorporating various discourses, practices, and institutional configurations.47 This postmodern representation of the historical figure is able to encounter the 'absent' Duchamp when he entered the paradigm of chess. A postmodern perspective is able to accept a 'multiple' as end point. Jones puts it this way; "It is, in fact, because the Duchampian function is multiple, and thus performs the contradictions embedded in postmodernism."48 Therefore, Duchamp presents an overriding paradigm shift in art by demonstrating how the paradigm of art, or the artist, can move through and into many other paradigms as opposed to a singular art perspective.

^Ibid, p.283 47 Jones, p.xiii 48 Ibid, p. xiv 33 Duchamp and the Traversal of Paradigms

Art theorist Amelia Jones analyses the process by which we define Duchamp's activity as an artist via an art historical and art theoretical analysis. It is through this that Jones questions commonly held notions concerning Duchamp, the readymades and their relationship to postmodernism.49 Duchampian chess raises questions concerning Duchamp's relationship to various intellectual paradigms via a postmodernist historical and theoretical analysis. Not forgetting that Postmodernism is a very wide umbrella which can cover many approaches.

Commonly it has been said of Duchamp that he has not followed the rules and practices that have governed the art world. One response to this is to conclude that Duchamp was not practicing art but something outside art. However, Duchamp never left the paradigm of art for he was always a part of the art community holding onto the values, the language and the roles of art. Furthermore, Duchamp's experience of art was part of an ever expanding intellectual field, as early as 1905 it can be seen that Duchamp's involvement in art was hand in hand with other paradigms. "Sundays at Puteaux" was a regular social event for those of the Duchamp-Villon intellectual and artistic circle. The Puteaux Cubists were deeply interested in popular discoveries concerning science and philosophy and also were passionate about chess. It was there that Duchamp is said to have learnt to paint and play chess at the same time.

Nearly every Sunday Marcel went out to Puteaux, where in good weather the artists and their friends spent the day . . . enjoying long, slow lunches at a table in the garden. Usually there would be a chess game in progress. Villon had taught Marcel to play chess when he was eleven, and all three brothers had a passion for the game.50

49 Jones, p.18 50 Tomkins, Duchamp a biography, London, Random House, 1998, p.35 34 Duchamp throughout his life was deeply involved with artist circles like the Arensberg's and individual artists like Man Ray, Max Ernst, and John Cage whose passion and interest in chess is well known and documented.

If the art historian and theorist continues to look narrowly at Duchamp as 'Artist,' and only encounters the art objects he created within the art world Duchamp will continue to disappear. For clearly many of Duchamp's practices and methods could not be considered 'normal' art. To understand Duchamp and his 'absence' historians and theorists should not only be looking at what Duchamp 'produced' but to the values he held within the paradigm of art and other paradigms. This can be further illustrated through an understanding of Duchamp's readymades. Here Duchamp is well known to have brought into the art paradigm objects that were not common to art and that were not perceived as art. Traditional methods, theories and practices of art deemed readymade objects as 'non' art objects. Yet Duchamp, through the readymade, has demonstrated to the paradigm of art that it is through the established language, conventions, and traditions of the paradigm of art that we are to understand the readymade.

. . . as has been noted (by De Duve among others) Duchamp's texts author(ise) objects otherwise understood to be outside the aesthetic canon, allowing for their co-operation into an institutional context. It is precisely him 'speaking' of them as art - by choosing and signing them - that changes their status as objects.51

It is ironically the rules and discourses of art that inform and give 'aesthetic'

meaning to the readymade. In other words, the non-art-object becomes art by entering the paradigm of art and being understood via the values, language,

culture, and history of art.52 Therefore, we are to understand Duchamp's intimate

51 Jones, p.132 52 Ibid, p.107 35 relationship with chess through the paradigm of art in the same way as a readymade, and not an activity that defines or represents Duchampian 'absence.'

The difficulty with chess, as opposed to the readymade, is that chess comes with its own practices, values and language that are distinct from art. To comprehend chess from the perspective of art a reconciliation of paradigms must take place. In other words, art historians and theorists need to adopt the non art object - chess, in a similar way they have done with Duchamp's fountain (1917). For the paradigm of art has, with difficulty, come to terms with Duchamp's art prank and now considers it to be an object of art.

36 Duchampian Chess

The comparison between the chronological order of [my] paintings and a game of chess is absolutely right . . . But when will I administer checkmate - or will I be mated? 53

Duchamp dropped clues along his way as to how we are to understand chess. When Duchamp co-wrote a chess book on end-game with chess theorist Vitaly

Halberstadt, he collected all of the notes that he made in preparation for the book's publication and placed them all in a 'box'. He titled this 'box' The box of 1932. What is significant about the act of Duchamp 'boxing' his proofs and diagrams, is that it identically reflects his act of 'boxing' all of the notes he made in preparation for his Large Glass. Duchamp titled this box The Green Box, and used it to take the viewer into the world of the 'bride' and the 'bachelors' the two major aspects of the Large Glass. Thus the Box of 1932 is to the L'Opposition et les cases conjuguées sont réconciliées as The Green Box is to the Large Glass. Many writers have noted this mirroring of Duchampian art and chess practice, however in doing so, they draw mainly upon aesthetic relationships between them. Duchamp did not make any indication that his theoretical work on chess was to be understood through the shattered glass of his Bride.

It is through the multiple paradigms in which Duchamp was involved, that we are to understand and represent him as an historical figure. Duchamp as artist sharing the values of other paradigms and bringing what is seen as incommensurate into unity. Duchamp has offered an explanation as to how two apparently incommensurate elements are united through the concept of 'inframince.'

33 Jones, p. 120 37 WHEN THE TABACCO SMOKE SMELLS ALSO OF THE MOUTH THAT EXHALES IT THE TWO ODOURS ARE MARRIED INFRAMINCE.54

The smell of smoke and the mouth are distinct and separate entities, though through the act of smoking, the two odours are combined forming a 'new thought.'55 Thus through inframince the paradigms of art and chess are married in the life and work of Marcel Duchamp. The relationship between art and chess is very complex and multi layered, and is not able to be reduced to a meta theory or solved by dismissing Duchamp's engagement with chess.

The many paradigms in which Duchamp 'worked' or 'played' need to be understood as blending within the paradigm of art via this understanding of inframince, like that of the smoke mixing with another odour. This proposed historical methodology is not only relevant to Duchamp but to all historical figures. The various contradictory positions held by historians and theorists concerning Duchamp and his incommensurate activities can be understood by the history of art. Art is what is brought into existence via a series of established conventions and fulfils various criteria. Postmodernism offers a perspective that is able to bring together that which was an anomaly to modernist historical representation of Duchamp. It is through postmodernism that the 'sub-systems' or sub-paradigms that Duchamp was part of can be understood and can become

54 View, ser. no.l, March 1945 53 Duchamp (R.Mutt), The Blind Man, New York, 1917 38 part of his historical representations. Unity can be created through acknowledging the existence of these paradigms and the way in which Duchamp's activities created 'inframince' with each other: art and chess, chess and art, chess and science, science and art. Duchamp is 'found' through an historical and theoretical methodology founded upon such postmodern multiplicity.

39 Chapter 2.

Duchampian Chess in a Postmodern Historical Field

Photographic documentation of Duchamp's studio in New York around 1917

(PLATE 8) presents a visual glimpse of the conceptual significance of chess. Photographs show a large chess board hung on the side wall, illustrating a specific chess position. Much of Duchamp's studio life was spent playing chess, studying games and problems. Upon the floor is his readymade titled Trebuchet, or Trap: (PLATE 9) a term taken directly out of theoretical chess terminology.1 What is shown in this photograph, is rather elementary and observational, but is significant in showing that in this one studio a merger has taken place between several distinct and separate intellectual paradigms.

The game of chess stood at a junction of a number of paradigms in the life of Marcel Duchamp. In particular many themes of Duchamp's reflect his intellectual perspective on the relationship between art and chess. Therefore this presentation of the Modern and Postmodern periods will focus upon the relationship between rationalism and irrationalism, reason and romanticism, logic and mysticism or religiosity, which are key themes adopted by Duchamp. This "game" captured not only the theoretical imagination of Duchamp, but also the proponents of avant garde scientific investigation who saw the intellectual dimensions of the chess player as reflecting an ability to exist within an alteration of dimensions. Duchamp was later to apply his own studies into these dimensional realities in the conceptual formation of Duchamp's Large Glass (1923). Duchamp considered that the three dimensional world was a projection of another dimension of which our limited senses were unable to perceive. A large amount of Duchamp's own

1 Joselit, Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910-41, Cambridge, October, 1998, p.157-8 40 writings, The Green Box and The White Box (1912 - 20), deal with these questions.2 Chess symbolises a junction or merger in the life and art of Marcel Duchamp that is symptomatic of a greater historical shift. A shift that brought into question the authority and nature of modernist intellectual disciplines through a theoretical merger with other systems of knowledge, values and languages. Although Duchamp ante-dates what is commonly understood as Postmodernism (seen to have occurred approximately around 1969), he is widely recognised as a forerunner or a proto-postmodernist. Duchamp's postmodernism can be seen in his fluid engagement, blending, dismantling, and subversion of multiple intellectual paradigms. Duchamp's actions, within and beyond the paradigm of art, present an understanding of the conventions, practices and ultimate subversion of art. Duchamp as an artist could not be understood and represented in the same way as art historical figures who were before him. His art and actions are an anomaly to the paradigm of art. Duchamp needs to be understood historically, as distinct from those who had come before, who caused art historians and theorists to adopt an entirely new understanding, language, and perception of an artist. An understanding of the historical prefix post as a construction is an important aspect to the way Duchamp is approached. Duchamp must be understood via a context of changing historical periods and the subsequent effects upon intellectual and social paradigms of the Postmodern.

This chapter will explore the various historical conditions which positions chess in relation to Duchamp's greater body of work, by locating Duchamp's involvement in chess and art within the transitional historical period from the Modern into the Postmodern period. It is important to explore the various ways Duchamp experienced this historical shift in different intellectual paradigms. This shift stimulated Duchamp's interaction with 'new sciences,' hypermodern chess, avant-

2 de Duve, The Definitively Unfinished Marcel Duchamp, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1993, p.254 41 garde art, and the amalgamation of the knowledge and practice of various modernist intellectual paradigms. Finally, this chapter addresses, why the art historical field has not adequately looked into the paradigms of chess in relation to Marcel Duchamp as an art historical figure.

42 Duchamp the Chess "Idiot "

Damisch: . . . You remember Duchamp's famous print of two chess players . . . [I was furious] that idiot, Duchamp! He just managed to get $2,000 off me for his Chess Association and in exchange he gave me this horrible etching of chess players. . . . [And he] said that Art no longer had any internal necessity; it was now a pure convention!3

These words, spoken by art historian and theorist Hubert Damisch, tell of an incident involving himself and Duchamp. It was during a period when Duchamp devoted much time to the American Chess Foundation. In 1961 Duchamp organised an auction of artworks with proceeds going directly to the foundation.

This story of Damisch being 'swindled' by Duchamp into purchasing a 'horrible' work has possibilities for representing Duchamp's impact on the entire intellectual paradigm of art. The work in question, an etching of his 1911 cubist painting The Portrait of Chess players, is part of an incommensurate component of Duchamp's artistic and historical repertoire: chess.

Duchamp's rich involvement with chess existed at many levels; through personal financial support, research into endgame theory, gaining the title of "Chess Master" as a player, and the use of chess as the basis of many art works. However Damisch's response to the work is not unlike art historians' and theorists' responses to Duchamp's entire involvement with the game. It is alarming that chess was such an important aspect of his life and work and yet has been largely misrepresented and overlooked within the paradigm of art. The connection between chess and Duchamp’s greater artistic agenda, as expressed by Damisch, to expose art for being nothing more than institutional 'conventions,' is fundamental to understanding Duchamp as a historical figure. Furthermore, Chess is a ground for exposing the multiplicities and complexities that are contained within

3 Bois, Hollier & Krauss, A conversation with Hnrbert Damisch, October #85 Summer, 1998, p.10 43 Duchamp's art practice and his involvement in a number of intellectual paradigms.

The common historical representation reveals the perspective that Duchamp quit art to play chess, this involved an entire and total 'binary' shift for Duchamp in thought and practice. Tomkins, who has written extensively on Duchamp, observes,

Although chess claimed a great deal of the energy that had been formerly devoted to his Large Glass, the usual statement that he abandoned art for chess is misleading. In fact, one of the essential facts about it is that while he has successfully avoided playing the role of artist since 1923, he has never left the art world. 4

Tomkins points out that the art paradigm has used a blunt instrument to separate aspects of Duchamp's life. This understanding of Duchamp 'quitting' one intellectual activity and his taking up of another is symptomatic of a particular understanding about the way intellectual paradigms define historical figures. Furthermore, particular uses of historical methodology place restrictions upon how historical figures are investigated and subsequently represented. Jones takes this point one step further by stating that the concept of art history has always been embedded in Modernism.

Although art history is a vast field of inquiry that is riven with disagreements and contested definitions of its own hermeneutic functions and historiographic identity, in the broadest sense its praxis is deeply invested in a set of assumptions and regulations located within the discursive formation of the modern. Founded within the modernist regime, the discipline of art history is intertwined with modernism as its contiguous and constitutive discursive formation. 5

4 Tomkins, Ahead of the Game, Marmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin, 1965p.52-3 5 Jones, p.8 44 It is these assumptions of art historians that have led to the creation of a coherent art narrative of Duchamp's life and work that has not allowed chess to disrupt or to inform it. Duchamp's engagement in a variety of intellectual and cultural paradigms disrupts such a clear cut understanding of Duchamp as artist. Such an approach restricts the historical and critical understanding of Duchamp by considering his activities outside the paradigm of art, as peculiar, inconsistent and irrelevant. As 'an-Artist' Duchamp allowed diverse and distinctly different institutions to converge, to interrelate, informing a complex philosophical understanding of art and the intellectual milieu in which he was living. Duchamp, the postmodernist, defies postmodernist definition.

45 ' Post' as an Historical Concern

From within any historical investigation, questions are posed that cannot be answered through historical investigations alone. History, as a finite human construction, is always understood "retrospectively" and is unable to fully grasp the ’totality' of any given moment in time. History seeks to create a set of defining characteristics so as to develop a structure of understanding that is able to encompass a progression from pre-history to the present.6 Theorists use history to locate the present, attempting to answer questions by looking at what has been before. This understanding of the past informs our concept of 'time' and its movement as 'historical,' as a forward movement in a 'linear' and 'irreversible' manner.7 Questions concerning cultural, economic, political, ecological, biological, social, and national change are often presented to history to answer. Theorists look to history to pinpoint 'origins' or the birth of specific periods and their downfall or transition. If one can understand what has been, we are likely to understand who we are now. However, it has been argued that this is only half of the role that history should play. History should also be able to predict where should we go from here?8 These points concerning historical understanding were raised by Hubert Damisch in an article titled "A Conversation with Hubert Damisch" presented in October 1998.9 His concern is that modernist representations of historical developments seek to pinpoint 'origins' as distinct moments in time10. In our efforts to find answers through history, we have asked history to locate the birth of one epoch or its transition into the next. Such structural models create a simplification of the ebbs and flow of time and

6 Bois et al., p.5 7 Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity, Durham, Duke University Press, 1987, p.13 8 Bois et al., p.5 9 Ibid 10 In 1997 Damish curated an exhibition titled "Moves" at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, reviewed in Artforum by Yve-Alain Bois, Dec 1997, to illustrate the 'game' played by a gallery or a collection and an art audience. 46 historical change. The historical representation of figures is also subject to such simplification. Duchamp is commonly located by historians as pinpointing a historical shift into Postmodernity, yet chess in the life of Marcel Duchamp has been left in the theoretical and historical wake. Each occurring stage is distinct from the one before and defined in an ordered progression, as a result, our ability to perceive history is only possible through the establishment of structured segmented definable stages.11 One difficulty with this understanding and use of history, is that we are unable to locate the present. That is the present is only able to be located once it can be seen in the past. For example, the current definition of the present in terms of 'post,' the Postmodern, is defined in terms of what the present is not. The present has come after the Modern epoch and is unable to be further defined. The result is that the present is always defined by the last historical period that has been defined.

While it is true that we "make up" history, we do not have full and arbitrary latitude to make it up as we please. The line by Marx, to the effect that people make their history but not as they choose .. . something real is going on out there and a knowledge of past maybe helpful to us in our efforts to "read" it, interpret it, and possibly even to deal with it.12

Furthermore, when we hold fast to the concept of progressive, linear historical development, each historical stage or transition is only understood through the concept of 'aftermath.' The present is living in the aftermath of an event or historical period. Thus we are forever condemned to understand the present with the prefix "late" or "post," without ever being able to 'see' what defines the present and subsequently projects our thinking into the future.13 Such defining labels as

"late" or "post" represent an understanding of our place in history, but reveal our

11 Damisch, The Origin of Perspective, MIT Press, 1994, p. 28-9 12 Janet Abu-Lughod "On the Remaking of History: How to invent the Past"Discussion in Contemporary Culture #4, (ed)Barbara Kruger & Phil Marinai, Seattle, Bay Press, 1989, p.125 13 Yve-ALain Bois, Moves, Artforum, 1997, p.5 47 lack of understanding of the present. Due to this understanding of historical progression we can only live with a sense of "belatedness," being tied to that which is outmoded and surpassed by the present, which we are unable to see.

In 1989, a group of intellectuals gathered at Boston University to discuss this very question; 'What period are we in?'14 Their conclusion was to speculate whether our period was defined, not in a cultural term, like the Renaissance, or the Middle

Ages, but by any number of 'isms,' derived from political, social, economic, environmental, racial, ecological, technological paradigms, prefixed with 'post' or

'late.' The use of historical terms such as 'post' or 'late' by now inferred an overtone of 'inferiority' in comparison to the preceding movement, however the prefix did indicate 'an absence of positive periodising by not allowing this period to be self defining or significant in its own right. Such prefixes are never free from

'evaluative bias' or prejudices as all historical systemisation is produced by 'hierocratic constructs.'15 The terminologies and descriptions used to represent an historical period indicate how one is to perceive this period in comparison to others. Thus modernist histories create a comparison between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with one historical period preferenced above the other through the use of the descriptive metaphors; 'light' and 'dark.' Damisch argues that problems associated with the way history is perceived can be illustrated using chess as a historical model.

14 Jenks, What is Post-Modernism?, London, Academy, 1996, p.ll 15 Calinescu, p.133 48 Chess as a Modernist Historical Model

Despite Damisch's dislike of Duchamp's 'horrible etching of chess/ he holds with Duchamp a common interest in the game. Damisch says that chess offers us a model for perceiving the questions that history poses, yet is unable to answer. 16 The relationship between history and chess can be seen through the way a game is played, documented and studied, when viewed in its entirety. A complete game is divided into three distinct stages; the 'opening' phase, the 'middle game' and the

'ending.' A game is seen as a natural historical progression from pre-history to the present. The theoretical language of chess also stresses the importance of progress and piece 'development' that effects the control or power over the board that each piece possesses. A chess player is constantly asking of history; 'Where has this piece been?' 'What were the choices that have led to each stage?' and finally 'What choices should be made next?' If a viewer has witnessed all of the moves of each player, chess presents a complete or pure experience of its history. In chess a spectator is given perfect and complete information, packaged upon a unifying structure of a grid or chessboard, with only a limited amount of reasonable and legal possible moves. The difference between history and chess is that the chess players and viewer have access to all of the information determining the outcome. On the other hand, the historical figure has only a limited perspective of the present position, has only witnessed a few moves, has a limited knowledge of what has past, and thus is not able to perceive the best moves or choices of the future.17 As a consequence, historians who reduce the movements of history to 'chess like' binary shifts (light and dark) lose the subtle and entwined characteristics of the historical periods. However Damisch stresses that history never works in a structured way as each phase is inherently inter-connected with

16 Yve-ALain Bois, p.7 17 Ibid, p.5 49 the phase before. Damisch claims "that a great period of art is founded on everything that came before it."18

During the Modern historical period, historical representation and investigation has been understood to operate within a grid or rigid structure. The grid in turn has become symbolic of the modernist historical, intellectual and aesthetic paradigms.19 For the grid operates as a defining structure that creates stable systems of structure in which all intellectual investigations can take place. The modernist historian believes they are watching, documenting and investigating something like a chess game. The events of history are seen by modernist historical practice to be played out, one after the other, in a neat and structured progression. Yet as Eric Fernie points out

There are no overwhelming arguments in favour of the past being divisible into periods as opposed to being an uninterrupted flow of events, but, as Wolfflin noted, we have to divide it up in order to maintain our sanity. Periods as concepts come in a number of different forms, including, cycles, progressive stages, styles, centuries and things such as reigns, all of which may be divided into early, middle and late phases.20

And are able to set out the precise structure of historical progress and,

to describe the past as it really was, through the careful accumulation of what they considered to be an incontrovertible mass of fact, art history and its methods.21

This 'grid' or structure was likewise applied to understand the intellectual paradigms that operated throughout the Modern historical period. Modern civilisation was seen to be built upon the intellectual foundations of science, mathematics, politics, economics, and the arts. Such institutions or paradigms

18 Ibid, p.6 19 Ibid, p.7 20 Fernie, p. 350 21 Ibid p.335 developed a complete trust in systems and structures of knowledge that came to be considered infallible.22 A consequence of modernist institutionalisation was the creation of metaphorical boundaries that surrounded each paradigm thereby making them distinct and exclusive. Historical figures were understood to cohabit such paradigms in this way. Duchamp is not defined by any other paradigm other than art. Due to this rigid modernist structure there is a flattening out of the inconsistent, and the contradictory. An artist's life and development is presented as a progression from one artistic phase to the next in a compact and unified structure. The artist also operates as an end point for interpretation and ultimately the 'narrator' of their own meaning.23 Thus the artist who is also chess player becomes a construct of the art historical institution founded in Modernism and consequently loses the title of chess player.

Historical investigations into the practice of the artist Marcel Duchamp meet with various problems, complexities, and contradictions. Duchamp is understood as an artist who disrupts the foundations of the modern epitome, tied up in the development and maintenance of systems of knowledge which are subsequently brought into question. Many look to Duchamp as the 'origin' of the 'post' modern.24 But in so doing they are unable to make sense of the relationship between art and chess. This is due to the continual adoption of the modernist art historical paradigm in investigations into Duchamp. No longer is such a binary representation of Duchamp adequate.

22 Jones, 1994, p.2 23 Ibid, p.11-12 24 Ibid, p.3 51 The " Progress " of Modernity

Greenberg's Modernism, one of the most dominant theories of modernist practice, as presented in his essay "Modernist Painting," most succinctly codifies a positivist view of history. It is in this view of history that representations of Duchamp as an artist fail to deal with Duchamp as chess player and all of the complexity that this relationship entails. Modernist art historical practice looks to the artist, and their works from within the paradigm of art. Thus when an artist, like Duchamp, moves beyond the borders of art, modern art history deems that they have disappeared. This is highly problematic for Duchamp's theories, works and actions as he traversed across many paradigms forming something quite unknown to art.

One word is able to sum up the dominant ideology of the period from the Renaissance until well into the Nineteenth Century: 'Progress.' Modernity expresses itself in a continual progression of intellectual, political, economic, scientific, artistic, technological, and physical developments.25 Progress was expressed in the never ending developments of science, medicine, mathematics and encapsulated in the theories of Charles Darwin and Adam Smith. Within the intellectual discipline of art, historians and theorists began to view artistic developments, movements and stylistic changes in time, from one 'ism' to the next, bound up in a belief of modernist advancement and 'progress.' Modernist art historians theorised that the developments of modern art were reacting to the failings of past historical periods, and were progressing towards a pure and universal end.26 This further developed as theorists and artists proclaiming the creation of a universal aesthetics and universal meaning in art. That through art

25 Ibid p.8 26 Ibid, p.6 52 an unbridled 'creativity' and freedom of expression will produce a universal language.

Duchamp, the Kantian Idea of the supersensible, or his sensus communis, states that it is a requirement of reason that anyone be endowed, de jure if not de facto, with the faculty of making art. Not only taste but also genius, or better, to use the modem term that conflated them, creativity, ought to be assumed as an ability shared by humanity - itself an Idea of reason, by the way - so that the claim to conceptual objectivity laid down by the judgement "this is art," which is however merely aesthetic and subjective, be grounded and justified; so that the modernist quest for an ontological definition of art, its striving for theory, its self referential reduction to essential conventions, be meaningful; so that neither the enthusiasm with which so many modem artist prophesied the advent of a universal language.27

A faith in modern rationality, closely associated with objective judgements, became secured within established institutional conventions. The 'cult' of reason sought to establish a 'conceptual' objectivity to surround and define what it deemed as art. The pursuit of an 'ontological' systemisation saw a development in art theory as an essential component in the creation of objective structured meaning. The Modern period encompassed a belief in the ability of humanity to use critical reason to progress into the future; a future in which we have control. However, alongside modernity runs a distrust of rationality and a fear of progress, and sees civilisation at the mercy of nature, disorder, and restlessness about the future. This is clearly seen in the rise of the Romantic movements of the nineteenth century and further with the Dada and Surrealist movements of the 20th Century from which Postmodernism grew.28

Art historical systems that once enabled 'truth' to be perceived and meaning or cognition to be created and transmitted, fail at the hands of Marcel Duchamp.

One unified representation of the historical figure is not able to accommodate all

27 de Duve, Kant after Duchamp, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1996, p.323 28 Barzun, Classic, Romantic and Modem, London, Seeker and Warburg, 1961, p.37 53 of the complex, incommensurate positions that are presented to the art historian.29 For in Duchamp a 'tension' is created between the conventions and structures of the modern period by his art and in particular non-art actions. For example, Duchamp's investigations into elite end game studies in chess are not able to be carried or transmitted via the paradigm of art. Attempting to apply 'modernist' ideologies and intellectual historical systems to Marcel Duchamp, the complexities of discourses between the paradigms Duchamp traversed, what he created, how the paradigm of art perceives, reads, and analyses them, continues to produce a multitude of understandings, misunderstandings, readings and mis-readings.30

'Modernist' art practice has become defined by these theories of Clement Greenberg, as he presentes in "Modernist Painting" (1965), which specifically relates to artistic developments from Courbet and his lineage into the twentieth century.31

What had to be exhibited and made explicit was that which was unique and irreducible not only in art in general, but also in each particular art. Each art had to determine, through the operations peculiar to itself, the effects peculiar and exclusive to itself. By doing this each art would, to be sure, narrow its area of competence, but at the same time it would make its possession of this area all the more secure. . . Thereby each art would be rendered 'pure' and in its 'purity' find the guarantee of its standards of quality as well as of its independence. 'Purity' meant self­ definition, and the enterprise of self-criticism in the arts became one of self-definition with a vengeance.32

And it is this 'narrowing down' and 'purification' of each art that has rendered Duchamp as an artist and a chess player as a deviation from the Modern epoch.

For the art of Duchamp is informed by a number of intellectual paradigms and is in no way a narrowing down but an integration or expanding out of the fields of

29 Joselit, p.3 30 Jones, p.103 31 Ibid, p.4 32 Clement Greenberg, Modernist Painting. Art and Literature No. 4 spring 1965 .pp 193-201. 54 art and the roles of the artist. Duchamp as artist was dependant, as opposed to independent, on the developments, languages and practices beyond 'pure' fields of art.

The investigation into Duchamp's relationships with other paradigms beyond art needs to take into consideration the historical context of each paradigm. In particular the shift from the Modern to the Postmodern. An awareness of the

Postmodern period is one that has dawned gradually, and was not a sudden binary historical shift at one particular moment in time.33 The understanding of what it meant to be modern had altered. The modern began to be viewed as something that was passing into history, an old fashioned ideal or a familiar sentiment.34 In seeking theoretical clarity, many writers on Postmodernism depend upon establishing clear boundaries or limitations on their dialogue, for the Postmodern, as seen with the Modern, means many different things depending on the discourse and context in which one is speaking.35 In conducting a study across a number of different intellectual paradigms, the theorist is faced with an ever increasing difficulty in understanding the way the term Postmodern is used and understood by each paradigm. Thus the progression from the Modern into the Postmodern in the art and life of the historical figure Duchamp is a complex dialogue between the varying aspects of the Modern and of that which is beyond.

33 Calinescu, p.134 34 Barzun, p.115 35 Hollinger, Pragmatism: From Progressivism to Postmodernism, Westport, Connecticut, London, Praeger, 1995, p.257 55 The transition into Postmodernism

The intellectual paradigms of Modernism were experiencing events, disruptions and developments that could no longer be understood or systemised within the structure or 'progress' of modernism. Within art Duchamp was blamed for this disruption. Art movements like Dada, in which Duchamp had a critical role, reacted seriously against modernist beliefs in progress and rationalism.36 The modernist paradigms and institutions like art, science, economics, and mathematics that developed as separate, distinguishable and definable entities, were now merging and interrelating into hybrid fields that were often indistinguishable. To reduce an understanding of postmodernism to a long list of binary oppositions to modernity, (otherwise know as, 'anti's;' anti epistemological standpoints; anti binarisms; anti essentialism; anti realism; anti foundationalism; opposition to transcendental arguments and transcendental standpoints; rejection of the picture of knowledge as accurately represented; rejection of truth as correspondence to reality; rejection of canonical descriptions; rejection of final vocabularies; suspicion of grand narratives, or meta-narratives37) is to not understand how integral the Postmodern historical shift is to the Modern historical period.

Charles Jenks stresses the importance of modernist/postmodernist position when defining the Postmodern. Jenks establishes that Postmodernism is intrinsically connected both with modernism and its 'transcendence.' The connection of

Postmodernism with the Modern period is significant as an understanding of the non-binary flow of history, the complexities and problems in establishing 'origins’ or linear shifts. Postmodernism, Jenks claims, is not anti-modernism, but a

36 Jones, p.6 37 Hollinger, p.260 56 subversion of the progressivist linear agendas of modernity. Postmodernism is a continuation of the modernist 'project.' Yet, as Jenks says, postmodernism contains a 'double coding': the coupling of modernity with its own transcendence.38

The shift from the Modern to the Postmodern can be said to occur when the very fabric of authority is 'destabilised,' when an institution's definition of 'purity' moves from the institution into the hands of another.39 However, the adoption of postmodernist thought created a relief from the 'highbrow,' and 'arrogant' modernist positions, through the acknowledgment of minority groups and perspectives. This new age saw a revival of interest in anti-rationality, romanticism, and irresponsibility coupled with a deep sense of self awareness.40 This self awareness led to various critiques of modernist assumptions producing a rejection of various traditional authorities, and in particular dismissed the 'dogma' of progress and rationality.41 One example from the paradigm of chess is that post-war players rejected the dogma of the modern school which relied on self declared scientific principles and a "classical" aesthetic. Post war players returned to pre-modern or Romantic (1600-1870) styles and values, whilst maintaining mathematical and scientific practices. Thus a hybrid of scientific/rationalistic practice coupled with romantic values was formed called Hypermodernism, of which Duchamp was an important proponent. The Postmodern is not only concerned with the disruption of institutional authority but is critical of the perceptions and influences upon the individual.42 The Postmodern moves each paradigm clear of the modernist establishment. The debate that once existed between orthodoxy and heretical positions within each modernist paradigm has

38 Jenks, p.15 39 Jones, p.16 40 Calinescu, p.139 41 Ibid, p.265 42 Barzun, p.117 57 merged and blended to create a 'new' understanding of the nature of progress, that of time itself. Time, once understood to be taking each intellectual paradigm forward towards a unifying end (be that pure maths, pure science, or high art), saw a regress and an integration with other paradigms, pre-modern developments and periods. Science can merge with art, maths with literature, politics with ecology.43 Science itself transcended its central pillar, 'reason', when it engaged in studies into the human mind and different non-physical dimensions (fourth dimensions or n-dimensions), where it was said "Reason has no knowledge."44 Science further embraced postmodernist consciousness through self reflection and critiques of traditional assumptions about praxis and theoretical-epistemology.45 The notion of 'infallible' science toppled before the force of the scepticism that surrounds empirical methodology. In turn this created a desire for answers and solid evidence, facts for the new perspectives, hypotheses and arenas that postmodern scientific investigation embarked upon.46

The threat of postmodernism to modernist institutions is obvious: each institution's ability to define and to maintain its own historical authority over a field or a position within a wider social or cultural context is challenged. The tendency of a 'modernist' perspective is to see the blending and merging of the disciplines and characteristics of postmodernism as negative and destructive. From a postmodern perspective a sense of both 'unity' and 'disunity' has been created. No longer can each intellectual paradigm be understood as 'autonomous,' and 'progressive,' because Postmodernism has dismantled the 'privileged' positions, conventions and traditions that defines each intellectual institution.47

Duchamp and other artists consciously set out to destroy the autonomy of each

43 Calinescu, p.64 44 Ibid,, p.134 45 Ibid, p.270 46 Tomkins, 1998, p.58-9 47 Jones, p.12 58 institution as represented within a modernist conception of intellectual institutions and histories. Duchamp's work clearly portrays the disruption of arts autonomy by bringing scientific and mathematical theories concerning the nth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry to form a unity with art. This plays a major role in the formation of the Large Glass. At the same time the "disunity" in such works as Duchamp's Large Glass can be seen to show how foreign and alien modernist intellectual paradigms can be to each other. The rendering of theoretical science and mathematics in the realms of art was entirely foreign.

The rigid structure of modernism that separated the mass public from notions of

'high' or elite positions within an institution was also criticised by Duchamp. The authority invested in art, to define and to interpret meaning and value, and to assign privileged positions to those the institution confirmed, was broken down by Duchamp. He questioned what was considered to be art, how the artist is to work, and how the viewer is to submit to both the work and the artist. Raymonde Moulin said Duchamp enabled the art world to 'elevate the paving-stone into a work of art,'48 and likewise the viewer into the artist.49 Duchamp acknowledged the authority of the viewer. Each interpreter "gives his particular note to his interpretation, which is interesting only when you consider the man who wrote the interpretation."50 Duchamp desired to involve the audience in the 'creative process.'

"The creative act takes another aspect when the spectator experiences the phenomenon of transmutation; through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual transubstantiantiation has taken place, and the role of the spectator is to determine the weight of the work on the aesthetic scale. All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by

48 Moulin, Living Without Selling, Art and confrontation New York Graphic society, 1970, p.133 49 Jones, p.13 50 Ibid, p.10 59 deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act." 51

51 Duchamp The creative act, Art news, Vol.56, no.4 summer 1957 60 Scientific Developments as Reflecting the Postmodern

One of the areas of Postmodern science that became of critical interest to Duchamp, and many cubist artists, was that of the fourth dimension, or nth- dimension (that is any number of dimensions) and non-Euclidean geometry. The 'modernist' understanding of the representation of space stems directly from antiquity through the Greek geometer Euclid, and was confirmed in the writings of Kant. Euclid established the framework for mathematical geometry and the representation of three dimensional space on a two dimensional surface. This method of geometry is commonly know as Plane, Line and Point geometry, as each of these elements were able to articulate the physical world. Euclid's foundations became the basis of geometry in visual representation in western art and went unchallenged from the Renaissance through to the end of the 19th century. Euclid, Kant and the moderns understood rationality and observation to be the foundation of perspective. The laws of perspective and 'empirical' observation are established and continually affirmed via our perception, movement and interaction within space.52

What is derived from experience has only comparative universality, namely, that which is obtained through induction. We should therefore only be able to say that, so far as hitherto observed, no space has been found which has more than three dimensions.53

The continual dialogue with the 'ancients' was an ever present element of

Modernism. All advancements within the Modern period were seen to be an extension of 'Antiquity.' However, as early as the 1820's alternative methods and approaches to geometry were thought to be possible. The first system was formulated in the 1850's and was centred around a distinction between

52 Henderson, 1983, p.13 53 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, London, Macmillan and Co, 1929,p69 61 unbounded space and infinite space, through the study of curves in any number of dimensions. These new approaches to geometry concluded that space is either seen as 'linear' (Euclidean) or irregular and curved. Such notions interested early twentieth century artists as these new theories 'transcended' perspective systems that were firmly established since the time of the Renaissance.54 Duchamp himself developed or "played" with these theories of new dimensions in his Large Glass and Green Box. In the top section of the Large Glass, called brides domain, the 3 Draft Pistons (PLATE 10) show the influence of new geometry, non-Euclidean and nth dimension in Duchamp's art.

The gauze, cut to form a perfect square, assumed different shapes as it was stirred by the air current. The series of chance images as a result of the deformations of the. square were recorded photographically in 1914. Duchamp chose gauze because its wide- meshed, regular texture allowed him to "avoid any play of light" while "the form of points or small squares equal and at equal distances from each other" enabled him to obtain "on a flat surface a conventional representation of the 3 draft pistons.55

I wanted to register the changes in the surface of that square, and used in my Glass the curves of the lines distorted by the wind. So I used a gauze which has natural straight lines. When at rest, the gauze was perfectly square- and the lines perfectly straight - as in the case in graph paper. I took the pictures when the gauze was moving in the draft to obtain the required distortion of the mesh.56

Draft is a force. If you capture it, you can make a piston move.57

In this case Duchamp created iconographical references to geometry through the perfect square and the lines like that of graph paper, though Duchamp took the theoretical world of geometry and placed it in the physical world. The physical element of wind distorts the principles of the grid and harnesses or captures

54 Henderson, 1983, p.5 55 Schwarz , 1997, p.125 56 Duchamp to Schwarz 1959-68, Ibid, p.125 57 Duchamp, Notes and Projects, Note 81, p 128; Note 82, p. 130 62 another element or dimension. This distortion of the two dimensional surface within a three dimensional world, was then represented upon the two dimensional surface of the Large Glass.

Duchamp's rendering of the fourth dimension in a three dimensional world then rendering it upon a two dimensional surface reflects that the hypothetical philosophical analogies were used to demonstrate how the existence of a third dimension operated within a two dimensional world. Duchamp mirrored mathematicians in using analogical models or images to describe and represent nth dimensions. For example one analogy was created to show how a being in a two dimensional world would experience a third dimension. "Flat Beings" that exist upon a horizontal two dimensional plane only experienced length and

•> breadth, not height. Within a two dimensional world the effect of raising a being from this plane would be to make it vanish, however the being has not vanished but has entered into a third dimension; height. It was argued that if this analogy is 'projected' to a three dimensional space and one enters a fourth dimension, which is said to be perpendicular to Euclidean height, length and breadth, one would disappear.58 Such philosophical musings were not based on fundamental mathematical principles or precise reasoning, yet came from theorists within the paradigm of mathematics. These new dimensions were unable to be understood through rational and empirical scientific methods, and further still, they were unable to be experienced.

It was like being blind from birth and being told what colour is; one does not have the language nor the deductive methods, nor experience to give a meaningful representation.59

58 Henderson, 1983, p.9 59 Ibid, p.13 63 Studies into the fourth dimension that had originally adopted the rational mathematical approaches gave way to philosophical and mystical explanations and expositions. However the language and the perspectives of mathematics were insufficient in expressing these concepts and mathematicians looked beyond their paradigm for solutions. One paradigm in which they found assistance was chess.

64 Chess as a Metaphor for a ' New ' Perception in Science: the nth-Dimension

The philosophical impact of non-Euclidean geometry in the Nineteenth century . . . shook the foundations of mathematics and science, branches of learning that for two thousand years had depended on the truth of Euclid's axioms. As a result, optimistic belief in man's ability to acquire absolute truth gradually gave way during the later nineteenth century to a recognition of the relativity of knowledge.. . . For certain Artists in the early twentieth century, non-Euclidean geometry was to be synonymous with the rejection of tradition and even with revolution.60

Scientific writings concerning the fourth dimension moved out of the paradigm of science and entered the popular domains. The debates surrounding the fourth dimension drew artists and intellectuals out of other intellectual paradigms and into science. Towards the end of the 19th century articles on the fourth dimension and non Euclidean geometry began appearing in the popular mainstream press.

Interest and involvement in science and mathematics flowed into other intellectual paradigms such as literature, art and the public domain. H.G Wells The Time Machine published in 1895 is a case in point. The Time Machine helped create the popular impression that the fourth dimension was time, however it was non- Euclidean geometry and the movement through higher dimensions of space that proponents of non-Euclidean were concerned about.61 Science was on the street - the notion of popular science was born. Breaking down the walls of science and mathematics and transcending its founding 'fathers,' its methods and ideologies captivated the imagination of many twentieth century artists. Non-Euclidean geometry and the fourth dimension were no longer contained within the modernist, progressivist linear and distinct paradigms of maths and science, but entered into other intellectual paradigms. It was from this time that the artist

Marcel Duchamp moved out of the paradigm of art into the paradigm of science,

60 Ibid, p. 17 61 Ibid, p.10 65 or it could be said that the paradigm of science merged with the paradigm of art, and engaged with Marcel Duchamp.

Francois Le Lionnais (a contemporary of Duchamp's) in an interview by Ralph Rumney about the extent of Duchamp's scientific investigations says,

Francois Le Lionnais .... [Duchamp] liked talking to people with scientific backgrounds, and he asked them questions; he talked about mathematics. But until the end of his life he was stuck at Henri Poincare.. . . He had read a lot of books - not mathanatical texts which he would have been unable to understand, but.. philosophical works ... Popular science. . . That is the philosophical musings of a great mathematician, which combine philosophical and mathematical qualities. This influenced him a lot. 62

One geometer called Jouffret, who affirmed the existence of higher dimensions, had many doubts about whether it was possible for the fourth dimension to be physically represented or even visualised. He suggested that it was equivalent to a chess player playing blindfolded a number of different games at the one time.63 Attempts to visualise the fourth dimension created much debate. Jouffret suggested that it was possible; "one who devoted his life to it could perhaps eventually be able to picture the fourth dimension."64 What was needed was to stretch one's intelligence to the point of breaking, beyond the 'plane' that exists between the third and fourth dimensions. One other French Mathematician, Henry Poincare, suggested the problem of representation or 'proving' lies not with the fourth dimension but, with the methods that were being employed. He argued that the criteria used for empirical science are only a set of conventionally

'convenient' methodology used to study specific phenomena. When conventional methodology was applied to a fourth dimensional study empiricism is found to be wanting. Which is to say that one set of scientific conventions are no more valid

62 Rumney, Marcel Duchamp as a Chess Player: Francois Le Lionnais Interviewed by Ralph Rumney, Studio International 189 no. 972, Jan-Feb 1975 63 Henderson, 1983, p.73 64 Ibid 66 then any other. It is only the differing conventions, applied to differing circumstances that produce the required results. When a set of scientific conventions is not able to operate within the fourth dimension, the conclusion is not that the fourth dimension does not exist, rather that the methodology employed is not appropriate for the task. Not being able to visualise or validate higher dimensions does not prove or falsify the existence of Euclidean or non- Euclidean geometry.65

65 Ibid, p.16 67 Duchamp's place in Postmodernism

The relationship between Duchamp, chess, non-Euclidean geometry and the fourth dimension offers a way of understanding or representing the various complexities that came into play within a postmodern historical context. Aspects of moving beyond the boundaries of particular intellectual paradigms or the relaxing of the parameters to allow other paradigms to merge, became a rallying point for artists within Cubism, Surrealism and Dada.66 Duchamp distinguished himself from these artists by applying scientific and mathematical theories to his art by making that which was unknown within the paradigm of art. In addition he abandoned conventional art materials and adopted alien media which he considered more appropriate to his subject matter.

To this end he considered paint, canvas, and brushes to be hopelessly outdated tools. They seemed to him to be no longer adequate to express modern thought or to take up the artistic challenge presented by increasingly complicated realities. . . In order to enter this discourse Duchamp had to invent a pictorial method that could not be compared to anything that had been know as art until then.67

Duchamp became interested in the work of Henry Poincare, whose theories were considered .to have shaken the 'foundations of all exact knowledge.'68 The representation of the fourth dimension was understood by Poincare to be impossible for the observer to determine the top from the bottom, or left from right, as the fourth dimension contained a relativity of space. The moving from one dimension to another is clearly demonstrated by Duchamp's studio. Looking once again to the 1917 photograph of Duchamp's New York studio, and with this in mind, Duchamp nailed his coat rack, Trebuchet (trap), to the floor rather than the

66 Jones, p.6 67 de Duve, The Definitively Unfinished Marcel Duchamp, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1993, p. 245 68 Ibid, p.243 68 wall, and upon the wall he hung a chessboard each object being displaced to occupy a new dimension. In another move, Duchamp attempted to show the fallibility of conventional geometry in a wedding gift to his sister Suzanne. A geometry textbook was hung out in the 'elements' (a reference to Euclid's original text titled Elements), where the wind and the rain ripped through the pages to destroy the very principles it contained. The work was titled Unhappy Readymade (PLATE 11).

The transition from the nineteenth century to the twentieth has been termed "a period of doubts," where the very foundations of science were 'transcended' by 'idealism and agnosticism.'69 At the time science had encountered physical anomalies that put into question Newton's classical mechanics, a foundation stone of scientific empiricism; x-rays (1895); radioactivity (1896); and the electron (1897). The resulting perception was that science was at a crisis point. During this time when most people believed in the stability of institutional science, Duchamp took hold of its developments and its transition, incorporating them into his thinking and his art practice. Duchamp's aim was to do to art what had been done to science.70

The anaesthesia of logical thought, the "cretinization" of reason, was Duchamp's lifelong artistic occupation. Although he was indebted to the sciences for his revolutionising of the visual arts as hardly any other artist in this century, Duchamp was basically hostile to scientific rationalism, which had assumed the role of religion and philosophy as the principal means to explain reality.71

Duchamp's approach to science developed into 'hostility' toward any form of rationalism, progress and empiricism, and suggested that the only way to

69 Ibid, p.244 70 Ibid, p.245 71 Ibid, p. 257 69 understand reality was to use 'religion and philosophy.' This hostility towards progress was also applied to his attitudes about art.

Art is produced by a succession of individuals expressing themselves; it is not a question of progress. Progress is merely an enormous pretension on our part. - Marcel Duchamp, 1946.

Evidence of Duchamp's interest in the developments of maths and science can be clearly seen in his writings published in the White Box, (a collection of notes and diagrams by the artist from 1912 - 1920). One of the central themes of this document is the attempt to visualise the fourth dimension. The White Box and Duchamp's continual interest in science culminated in his 'masterpiece' The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. In this work Duchamp challenged the viewer to 'visualise' and to understand the mystifying forms, and cryptic notes concerning the nth dimension.

The quest to visualise the fourth dimension, as proposed by the mathematician Jouffret, to be like that of a blindfolded chess player, captivated the mind of Duchamp. By 1911 chess had become a recurring theme in his work and will be further explored in chapter five. Duchamp said of The Portrait of Chess Players 1911, "I painted the heads of my two brothers playing chess, not in a garden this time, but in indefinite space."72 In October 1911 Duchamp created a series of 'Cubist' drawings in preparation for this work. Each sketch draws on the theme of visualising the psychological states and mental activity of the players. Through interlocking planes, segmentation and dislocation, each player can be read as attempting to break down the dimensional barrier between themselves and the 'mental chessboard.' Duchamp was not content with the success of this early form of 'Cubist visualisation,' instead he introduced an element that has been mistaken

72 referring to "The Game of Chess" 1910 (Duchamp, ”A Propose of Myself," unpublished lecture delivered at the City Art Museum of St. Louis, Missouri, 24 Nov. 1964.) 70 for Futurism, yet here the technique is a rendering of Cubism coupled with a movement of forms or "static representation of movement." This can be seen in works like; Coffee Mill (1911) (PLATE 12), Sad Young Man on a Train (1911) (PLATE

13), Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) (PLATE 14), The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes. (1912). In the Coffee Mill we see not only a cubist use of the x-ray technique but also the movement of coffee through the mill and into the draw. In this work Duchamp further enhanced the theme of movement by adding directional symbols to show the motion of the coffee mill's handle. The static cubist chess forms of The Portrait of Chess Players (1911) were superseded by the adoption of futurist iconography of movement representing organic/mechanical forms in eternal motion. The King and Queen represented a 'dream like' reality of the movement of human thought, 'swift' in motion, within a psychological framework that surrounds the static chess pieces as they sit upon the chess board.

chess = a design on slate / that one erases, / the beauty of which / one can

reproduce without the / intervention of the "hand" 73

Within a postmodern historical field chess had also, for Duchamp, became more closely associated with the act of making art itself. He understood that chess could also be considered as a 'painting of precision' and that it contained the 'beauty of indifference,' as was understood by Duchamp's readymades. Chess was a mechanical means of 'drawing' in a way that destroyed the artists touch, or hand, and therefore the 'aura' that was associated with modernist works of art.

73 Marcel Duchamp, Notes, ed. and Trans. Paul Matisse, Boston: G.K. Hall, 1983, note 273. unpaginated.

71 Chapter 3.

Chess "Praxis" from Modernism to Postmodernism

RALPH RUMNEY You say he was not a Dadaist as a chess player... hut was he an innovator? 1

This chapter will position Marcel Duchamp as a chess player, within the intellectual paradigm of chess, his importance, contributions and achievements. It will focus upon Duchamp's involvement with Hypermodernism and the historical institution of chess. The book Duchamp co-wrote with Halberstadt (1932) will also be considered. Chess will be presented as a playing surface on which to place the Duchampian chess pieces, which will serve to highlight his achievements, his associations, and the theoretical positions that he held as a chess player and the critical chess theories that relate. This chapter is a move, with Duchamp, into the historical paradigm of chess so to locate Duchamp the chess player and to reflect back to Duchamp the artist. This chapter will focus closely upon chess as a distinct and separate entity yet when presented from a postmodern perspective will explore chess as a paradigm that is deeply connected to a wider historical arena (The historical and theoretical development of chess from the Modern to Postmodern, the "post" renaissance modern "classical" school to postmodern

"hypermodernist" praxis). The history of chess offers a rich way to place Duchamp and his work in a historical and intellectual Postmodern paradigm. This mirrors historical methodologies which understands that history is complex and intricate and does not move in neat binary shifts from one period to the next. These historical periods will be explored to demonstrate how historical change affected chess in fundamental and lasting ways. Chess as a game is an embodiment of

1 Rumney 1975 72 modernity as philosophically it possesses many elements that the modern period has considered important: the intellect, domination, conquest, progress, science, rationalism, and logic. At the same time chess is closely associated with the irrational, mystical, and illogical. Finally, the relationships between chess and art will be woven into this study to explore Duchamps theoretical position.

It has been noted by a number of Duchampian and chess scholars that there is an increasing acknowledgment of the importance of chess to the life and art of Marcel Duchamp.2 What is significant, is that there is still little understanding concerning the relationship between the two intellectual paradigms of art and chess. There is one other reason why research into the relationship between Duchampian chess and art has remained so undernourished. That is very few people have both an understanding of Duchamp art work and an understanding of chess history, development, and theory. As discussed in the previous chapter Postmodernism presents an intermingling of various intellectual institutions and paradigms.

2 Humble, Keene, Damisch

73 The Histories of Marcel Duchamp as Chess Player

. .. comparatively little has been written about Duchamp’s chess as a form of artistic activity, how it relates to his other artistic interests, and what it reveals about his attitude to art in general. A few writers have commented on these matters, but their views tend to be underdeveloped and are often highly speculative. Roger Cardinal summed it up when he remarked that "nobody has entirely assessed the significance of chess in Duchamp's career."3

When attempting to address the nature of chess in the life of Marcel Duchamp one is met with many contradictions. Even within the paradigm of chess there is debate over his approach to the game. The following section will present the scope of the debate within the paradigm of chess and show how attempts have failed to bridge the theoretical distance to reflect upon his art. Within the paradigm of chess, theorists have attempted to determine Duchamp’s playing style via the complexities of conservative Classical chess play and Avant-garde Hypermodernism. Yet due to misunderstandings concerning historical hypermodernism in chess and of Dada in art, the theorists make false conclusions about Duchamp the chess player. There is much understanding to gain about Duchamp as artist and chess player from an investigation into the nature of Hypermodern chess.

It is tempting for the art historians, like Arturo Schwarz, to adopt a systematic approach when writing about Marcel Duchamp and to create a theory through which all of his work can be seen. However one must be wary of theories that claim to unlock the system or pattern behind Duchamp's work. For such dominant or meta theories have greatly affected how aspects of Duchamp's life and works are understood. Francis Naumann in his article titled "Marcel Duchamp: A

3 Humble, Marcel Duchamp: Chess Aesthete and Anartist Unreconciled, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol.32 no.2,1998, p.41 74 Reconciliation of Opposites/'4 warns that any attempt to formulate Duchamp "would be - in the humble opinion of the present author - an entirely futile endeavour."5 Francis Naumann suggests that Duchamp himself has given us his response to those that attempt to unlock the Duchamp mystery by saying "There is no solution, because there is no problem."6 In understanding the nature, role and significance of Duchampian chess one needs to see beyond the problem / solution dilemma and operate at a different cognitive level involving multiplicity and complexity. This thesis aims to demonstrate a multiplicity of the complex relationships between Duchamp as artist and as chess player. The importance for this approach, as Naumann states, is that Duchamp himself moved through a number of contemporary artistic styles and each time developed a unique approach of self consciously "defying convenient categorisation."7 To support this claim Naumann offers a series of quotations by Duchamp emphasising the importance of change and the defiance in his work to any tradition or "taste."

"'It was always the idea of changing, of not repeating myself." "Repeating the same thing long enough, and it becomes taste," a qualitative judgment he had repeatedly identified as "the enemy of Art," that is, as he put it, art with a capital A.’" (Duchamp interviewed by Sweeney, 1956)

Humble's assertion that current published views on Duchamp’s chess as art are "underdeveloped and often highly speculative is, he suggests, due to the reason that nobody is entirely sure how to understand or to define chess itself. Humble muses that chess players themselves debate whether chess is a game, sport, science, or art?

4 de Duve, 1993, p. 41 5 de Duve 1993, p.41 6As quoted in Arturo Schwarz, The Complete works of Marcel Duchamp (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1969: 2nd rev. ed., 1970),p. 201. 7 de Duve 1993, p.41 75 With this being said, the mystery of chess in the life of Marcel Duchamp is a subject that has often been approached in a formulaic manner. Questions like;

"What type of player was Duchamp?," "What was the role of chess in his life?," and "What is the relationship between chess and art?" have been presented in a simplistic and minimalistic fashion. One example of this is an article by grand master and chess theoretician Raymond Keene titled Marcel Duchamp: The Chess

Mind. 8 In this article Keene discusses Duchamp's achievements, his associations, his theoretical positions, and attempts to establish a relationship between art and chess. Primarily his analysis focuses upon the nature of Hypermodernist chess praxis and the dada art movement. Keene seeks to show that Duchamp as well as being a dadaist, was also a hypermodernist chess player and thereby establish that the relationship between chess and art is dada. In this way, Hypermodernism is often equated with dada, yet the similarities have more to do with the look and feel of the game rather than theory. In comparison to Classical or Modern games hypermodernism seems absurd and illogical.

Keene's theoretical analysis of Duchamp's chess play had to dismiss comments made by chess player and dadaist contemporary of Duchamp, Francis Le Lionnais. Le Lionnais defeated Duchamp in 1932 in Paris, and later stated that Duchamp was a not a dada chess player, but a player who adopted a conventional, conformist, or classical style of play.9 To counter this claim, Keene looks closely at the influence and the similarities between Duchamp and the founder of hypermodernism,

Grand master Aaron Nimzowitsch. Keene cites Duchamp's 'borrowing' a chess opening at the world Championship of 1927 that had been introduced by Nimzowitsch the previous year. Keene's theories concerning the relationship between chess and art are convincing. Keene argues that the tactical talent displayed in his love for "paradoxical hidden points" is fundamentally Dada.

8 Raymond Keene, Marcel Duchamp: The Chess Mind, Modern Painters, vol.2, no. 4, winter 1989 9 Rumney, 1975 76 Keene mirrors Duchamp's comments that chess was a "violent sport" with that of Nimzowitsch who said "chess was a struggle like that of life."10 Further, Keene shows Duchamp's continuing dedication to Nimzowitsch. In the course of his research Keene visited Teene Duchamp, Marcel Duchamp's wife, and found a copy of Nimzowitsch's Chess Praxis that Duchamp had hand written.

Keene demonstrates the associations between Duchamp and Nimzowitsch and dispels the comments made by Le Lionnais. Keene establishes a close association between Duchamp and Nimzowitsch, arguing that Nimzowitsch was a hypermodernist and therefore that Marcel Duchamp was one also. Keene's conclusion is not far off, yet, it maintains an understanding of Hypermodernism that is misleading. Keene adopts a very clear theoretical methodology of forming binary opposites. His use of opposites, or opposition, is essential for the creation of a distinction between classical and hypermodern chess. Yet this position implies a conflict between the two styles of chess play that is not necessarily true. One of the intrinsic characteristics of Hypermodernism is its connectedness with the movement surpassed followed.

The relationship does lie in the realms of Hypermodernism and Dada and yet it goes much further, as Duchamp goes further than Dada. Thus, Keene's whole approach to find the solution to the problem of Duchampian chess is mistaken.

An interview between Ralph Rumney and Francois Le Lionnais was the catalyst for this thesis and investigation. I set out to determine which one of the theorists was correct, and it was not until I reconsidered my methodology that an alternative conclusion could be reached. Ralph Rumney has just asked Le Lionnais to describe Duchamp's qualities as a player,

10 Duchamp quoted by Bandy, Schwarz 1975, p.70 77 FRANCOIS LE LIONNAIS I don’t know how well I can do that.. . in his style of play I saw no trace of . . . a Dada or anarchist style though this is perfectly possible. To bring Dada ideas to chess one would have to be a chess genius rather than a Dada genius. In my opinion Nimzowitsch, a great chess player was a dadaist before Dada. But he knew nothing of Dada. He introduced an anticonformism of apparently stupid ideas which won. For me that’s real Dada. I don't see this Dada aspect in Duchamp’s style-----

RALPH RUMNEY You say he was not a Dadaist as a chess player... but was he an innovator?

FRANCOIS LE LIONNAIS Absolutely not. He applied absolutely classic principles, he was strong on theory - he'd studied chess theory in books. He was very conformist which is an excellent way of playing. In chess conformism is much better than anarchy unless you are Nimzowitsch, a genius.

This musing ends with Rumney posing a question:

It seems to me that the extremely conformist style of Duchamp's chess which you describe has parallels in everything lie did, and that perhaps instead of looking for evidence of Dada in the way he played chess we should be looking for aspects of this conformism in his most anti­ conformist action? 11

Le Lionnais, it would seem, contradicts Keene's understanding of Duchamp's chess. Instead of looking for conformity within Duchamp's art, Keene refutes the very grounds for such an inquiry by stating that Duchamp was a Dadaist chess player and did not adopt a conformist or classical style. Yet even the investigation suggested by Rumney will bring us to a binary end. Lionnais claims to have seen no evidence of Duchamp's dadaist or hypermodernist chess play but instead a classical approach. Duchamp is either a conformist or a non- conformist artist, and

Duchamp is either a conformist or non-conformist chess player. In the end this will not bring us to an understanding of Duchampian chess, but a series of binary oppositions. Keene reached this conclusion even though the original question was

11 Rumney 1975 78 what sort of player was Duchamp? This investigation into Duchamp's chess is met with two opposing views; he is either a Hypermodernist or a Classicist. The historian is being asked to determine whether Keene or Lionnais is correct.

Hubert Damisch begins his article on Duchamp as chess player, The Duchamp Defense, with an outline of Duchamp's chess career.12 Damisch introduces his article primarily to construct a 'narrative' of the grand achievements attained by Duchamp in the realm of chess. The reading of this is impressive. However, Damisch then poses the questions, how does such a narrative serve in attempting to understand Marcel Duchamp? What is the purpose of such a narrative? In developing an understanding of Duchamp the artist what is the purpose of understanding Duchamp the chess player? Damisch says that this narrative should not just be told for the love of a story but to establish the value or worth chess held for Duchamp. Damisch stresses,

above all is his belief that [Duchamp] was never more interested in chess than after he had ceased being interested in painting.13

This narrative shows that Duchamp's involvement in chess was not a side-line interest but rather Duchamp's dedication to chess was with "all the ambition and single minded passion of a professional."14 Yet, as Damisch states, this passion

12 Damisch points out that Duchamp was interested in chess as a young man as shown by an etching by Jacques Villon (Marcel's brother) showing Marcel playing chess with his sister at the age of seventeen. Duchamp played in the 1924 World Amateur Championship, four French championships from 1924 to 1928, and four Olympiads from 1928 to 1933. He tied for first place at Hyeres 1928 and won the Paris championship in 1932. He drew a game with Grand Master Tartakower in 1928. Several times he beat Belgian Champion Koltanowsky in 1929. He was awarded the chess title of Master in 1929. In 1931 Duchamp became a member of the Committee of French Chess Federation and the French delegate to the World Chess Federation. In 1931 Duchamp co-wrote a book on chess with Halberstadt titled VOpposition et les cases conjures sont reconciliees. In 1935 Duchamp was Captain of the French Correspondence Olympic team.

13 Here it is important not to read painting as meaning art. But to understand the importance of Duchamp's ceasing painting in his career as an artist. 14 Damisch, The Duchamp Defense, October 10, Fall, 1979, p.8 79 that would dominate his time and intellect for over twenty years of his life ... "was no more than a game."15 Thus if the aim is to understand his art work it has been common practice to dismiss such an investigation in Duchampian chess as an incongruous aspect of his life.

15 Ibid, p.5-9 80 A History of Chess: A Philosophy

Chess is an artefact, a human construction that has its own history, which interconnects with many other cultural histories and developments. The modern game as we know it, is itself in a state of change and development as the rules of the game have to be updated each year. But the idea of chess has remained the same for centuries. Many historical variations of chess involve the movement of figures upon a board to simulate a battle, hunt or escape. These games involved various numbers of pieces, different sized grids, dice, and other external factors. The conditions for chess to exist can be established through the following definition: symbolic, imagined or 'plastic'* objects moved upon a grid. Although the size of the grid, method of movement and the laws that govern 'play' have been in constant change throughout the history of chess one aspect remains constant: Chess is a symbolic battle between two parties, a war that ends with the extinction of one or other side.16

Attempting to answer the question: How do we define chess? the historian H.G. Schonberg writes,

On its highest level, chess, as played by a handful of exponents, is as much a search for perfection as mathematics, art, or any other undertaking of the creative mind. Instead of using notes on ruled paper, or oils, or stone, or words, or formulae, the chess player uses the pieces at his disposal. These are his raw materials. His aim is to take these raw materials and from them forge a continuity that expresses his own personality. What can result is a conception that has a high level of expression and imagination and creativity, and it involves the ability to see, or sense, possibilities hidden to less refined minds.17

* In the philosophical sense of having physical existence. 16 Lasker, Lasker's Manual of Chess, New York, Dover, 1947, p.1-2 17 Schonberg 1973, p.23

81 Schonberg's text points to the duality within or paradoxical nature of chess: the rationalistic and the romantic. Chess is beyond our mental capacities, and can symbolise a quest into an unknown mental state.18 Chess offers a world of its own where discovery is endless and perfection is never reached. It was this very paradox that drew Duchamp to its table.

Chess has been said to be based upon very rationalistic and mathematical principals yet a chess game possesses its own kind of logic, similar to nothing but itself.19 It is said, "On the chessboard lies and hypocrisy do not survive long," 20 for the capturing of the King is proof of weakness and defeat. On the other hand some chess theoreticians and schools of chess have seen chess to be "as irrational as life itself."21 Full of mistakes, oversights, misjudgments, fortuitous events, everything that is opposed to logic and rationality. Whenever one places a structure, formal sequencing, dogmas, or rules of play onto a game of chess a player is always met with exceptions.22

There are many qualities of the game of chess that have drawn noblemen, lunatics, artists, and commoners to its table. Francis Bacon used chess methodology and imagery to expound many scientific and philosophical lessons. Likewise, Voltaire considered chess to reflect what was most honoured about the human mind and wit.23 Throughout the history of chess, great players were given the title of 'genius.'

The game offers an approach through both a scientific / rationalistic mythology and a mystical / romantic aesthetic. It was this that attracted Marcel Duchamp to

18 For example, chess symbolised the mental visualisation of the fourth dimension and investigations into non-Euclidean space -as was seen in the previous chapter. 19 Schonberg Grandmasters of Chess, 1973, p.2 20 Lasker, p.ix 21 Ibid, p.ix-x 22 Ibid, p. 9-10 23 Golombek, A History of Chess, London, Walter Parrish International, 1976, p.114 82 the chess board. He wove the games qualities of rationalism, mysticism and chance into many of his art works. For example in 1924 Duchamp made a chess poster for the Third French Chess Championships (1925) (PLATE 15) . This poster showed a cluster of cubes falling, by chance, similar to the marble cubes in Why

Not Sneeze Rose Selavy? (1921) (PLATE 16).

Chess presents an astounding number of possibilities, and in so doing raises questions about our finite minds ability to conquer a seemingly infinite field using only a pure mathematical or rationalistic approach.24 The story of Rousseau attempting to learn by rote opening moves and combinational sequences is an apt illustration.

I shut myself up in my room, and spent days and nights in trying to learn all the openings by heart, in stuffing them into my head by force, and in playing by myself without rest or relaxation. After two or three months of this praiseworthy occupation and these incredible efforts, I went to the cafe, thin, sallow and almost stupid. I tried my hand, . . .he beat me once, twice, twenty times; all the different combinations had become mixed up in my head, and my imagination was so enfeebled, that I saw nothing but a cloud before my eyes...... to practise myself in studying different games, the same thing happened to me; and after exhausting myself with fatigue, I found myself weaker than before. . . . I did not finish the first attempt, until I no longer had strength to continue it. When I left my room, I looked like a corpse, and, if I had continued to live in the same manner, I should certainly not have remained long above ground. 25

The invention of the printing press revolutionised the game as new theories and methods were more easily circulated. The human mind attempted to defeat infinity through the recording and documenting of games in 'book' form and the study of moves, opening sequences, and board positions. This methodology developed into a dogmatism with schools of chess players devoting themselves to

24 It is has been calculated by Maurice Kraitchik, in his Mathematical recreations, that the number of possible moves in chess after each player have moved only ten times is 169,518,829,100,544,000,000,000,000,000,000, or expressed 25x10(115). 25 Golombek 1976, p.116 83 the study and rote memorisation of hundreds of games, openings, and 'rules.' This became the standard approach to the mastery of chess but many theorists questioned the success of these efforts. The memorisation of books does not give one knowledge of chess for one is only confined to the obligatory moves, and is helpless if a player makes an unexpected move. Znosko-Borovski, a Romantic chess master, said that "chess is a game of understanding, not a game of memory."

The application of laws, sequences and established variations is less important than an understanding of chess.26

For Duchamp, chess was made up of many factors: intellectual, aesthetic, paradoxical, 'plastic,' and symbolic. But for the purpose of introduction Duchamp said of his interest in chess was founded upon the mechanics of the game.

". . . mechanics in the sense that the pieces move, interact, destroy each other, they're in constant motion and that's what attracts me. Chess figures placed in a passive position have no visual or aesthetic appeal. Its the possible movements that can be played from that position that makes it more or less beautiful."27

Chess represented . . .

The esoteric can't be said in words What's written in books doesn't matter . . . do not need to explain. Mistrust the capacity of Modem Rationalism to find solutions.28

In the documentary by Jean Marie Drot "A game of chess with Marcel Duchamp" the interviewer plays chess with Duchamp and at the same time tries to ask questions. As the interviewer struggled to ask questions while at the same time trying to remember how the Knight should move, Duchamp made some profound

26 Damisch 1979, p.18 27 Duchamp in Drot, A game of chess with Marcel Duchamp, L'institut National de l'Audiovisuael Direction des Archives: RM Associates/Public Media, 1987 28 Ibid) 84 comments about chess. For Duchamp "Chess is a construct of logic, a Cartesian construct, of mathematics, mechanics of motion."29

29 Ibid 85 A History o f Chess: An Origin

The earliest evidence of a recognisable form of chess, Chaturanga, is around 600 AD. Before that, all is speculation.30

The history of chess is little understood but to understand Duchamp's position as a chess player it is essential to place him within the theoretical and historical context of chess.31 It is common for writers on chess to present a historical narrative of chess for it is not commonly known.32 This chapter focus' only upon the movements and aspects of chess most critical to Duchamp.

Speculation about the first person to move a chess piece upon a chess board has captured the imagination of many chess historians. Many writers want to trace the origin to a single person at a specific point in time. Placing a marker upon the birth of chess is a modernist concern. It is an attempt to systemise historical development by placing a structure upon the past. To suggest that chess was the invention of one person in one place and time is to misrepresent the complexities of history itself.

A history of chess written by Golombek in 1976, confronts many of the myths about chess history that had been presented by historians as fact. In particular he challenges Murray, whose 1913 text titled History of Chess, is considered seminal.

Murray locates the birth of the game to a single man in north west India during the sixth century. Even today such specific and singular hypotheses are still considered plausible. Golombek begins his historical sweep with the comment that there are many wrong assumptions concerning the age of the game. Firstly

30 Whyld, The Oxford Companion to Chess, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, p.173 31 Lasker, p.l 32 Simons, (Check)Mating the Grand Masters: The Gendered, Sexualized Politics of Chess in Renaissance Italy, The Oxford Art Journal, 16/1,1993 86 many believe that chess dates from antiquity as there are many myths about

Romulus and Remus playing as children or Ulysses and Achilles who are said to have played chess.

It is true that boards constructed of squares indicating some sort of game have been found in tombs or in ruins [of Egypt, Rome and Greece]. But they are not boards for games which either anticipate or form the origin of chess. If they were, then quite clearly references would have appeared to them as such in the literature .. 33

Golombek makes the point that the Classical period had its own form of play upon a grid, but there is very little to indicate the nature of how the game was played, or whether it has any relationship to chess at all. This classical game ended with the fall of the Roman Empire.34 Therefore the chess of today could not have had its origin in the Grecko-Roman period. On the other hand, there is evidence to support chess ancestry in the east predating the Grecko-Roman's. A chess-like game called Zatrikion appeared during the Byzantium Empire but was increasingly considered in the west as morally questionable and was associated with "Persian debauchery". The Emperor Lexis Comnena was served by a body guard who turned religious leader at Mount Athos who wrote against the game.

Inasmuch as some of the Bishops and clergy leave virtuous paths and play zatrikion or dice or drink to excess, the Rule ordains that such shall cease to do so or be excluded. 35

In its defence the princess Anna Comnena wrote in Alexiad that the game was

'discovered in the luxury of the Assyrians, and was brought to us.36 Golombek muses that from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 some scholarly refugees made

33 Golombek, Writers Who Have Changed Chess History, London, Faber and Faber, 1968, p.ll 34 Golombek 1976, p.28-9 35 Ibid 36 Ibid 87 their way to Florence with zatrikion and perhaps influenced the dramatic transformations in the form of chess which existed there.37

A version more akin to the game of chess as it is played today is said to have been established in India during the sixth century. In the court of the poet Bana, (625 -

40 AD) a document called harschcharita is said to contain the first reference to chess, or as it was known, Chaturanga. 38

The historical development of chess was central to the investigation by chess theorist and historian Schonberg (1973), in his publication concerning the development of the chess "Grandmaster" as a historical figure. Schonberg begins with the adoption of Chaturanga by the Arabian empire (600ad). From here the game spread quickly throughout Persia and Arabia. It was with the rise of science under Islam during the eight to the tenth centuries that the highest levels of Chaturanga are considered to have been produced. This period saw the rise of at least one "Grand Master", by contemporary standards, and the publication of mathematical and scientific investigations into the game, including the circulation of problems and puzzles based upon Chaturanga positions. It has been suggested that it was not until the nineteenth century that we see equal levels of skill and theory in chess. By the eleventh century Chaturanga spread throughout Medieval

Europe via Arabic merchant trade routes. The game of chess had become a part of social life during the Middle Ages. References and chess documentation became abundant throughout many religious orders; popular with travelling entertainers; soldiers and nomadic groups.39 Chess also became popular in the aristocratic classes in Spain and there it remained unchanged for several centuries. At this time there were many variations and not until the Renaissance was there a

37 Golombek 1968, p.29 38 Whyld, p.173 39 Ibid 88 consolidation of the rules. Yet, even then specialised rules like 'castling' were local

'flavours' until it penetrated the social and intellectual life of Italy and became the universal game we play today.40 Chess is said to have come to Italy via merchant trade routes, through such ports as Venice and Genoa.41 Golombek uses the history of chess to show how the Renaissance was a complete shift from the period that preceded it. It has been speculated that due to the developments in mathematics, science, warfare, technology and the arts, chess players considered the medieval game outmoded. A new 'spirit' was created for the game: from the slow moving and static medieval version, the Renaissance created a game that was fast and dynamic. Every piece was altered in strength, value and movability (except the Knight as it was already considered very dynamic). News of the changes quickly spread and players came to Rome to learn about the developments. Thus the new game quickly spread throughout the known world.42 As in medieval times, the game became popular with many types of people, and was established in many royal courts. It became synonymous with intellectual prowess and it became common for a chess board to be featured in portraiture, symbolising the subject's intellect. Golombek highlights that intellectual boasting often didn't equate to knowledge of the basic moves.43

During the period from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century the centre for chess shifted form Italy to France and then to England. By the sixteenth century in England it was considered to be an essential part of a Gentleman's education. As evidenced by a 1531 publication by Thomas Elyot titled Governor.

The chesse, of all games wherein is no bodity exercise, is mooste to be commended; for therein is right subtle engine, wherby the wytte is made more sharpe and remembrance quickened. And it is the more

40 Lasker, p.1-2 41 Schonberg, p.51 42 Golombek 1976, p.81-83 43 Ibid, p.84 89 commendable and also more commodiouse if the players have radde the moralization of the chess , and when they playe do thinke upon hit; whiche bokes be in Englisshe. But they be very scarse, by causefewe men do seeke in plaies for vertue or wisedome.44

It was not until the 20th Century that chess began to assume a global significance.

In 1914 Tsar Nicholas II gathered the world's leading chess players to a tournament at the St. Petersburg Chess Society. Prize money was posted as 1000 Rubles to play for the title of "Grandmaster," thus coining the phrase.45 Most significant perhaps was that chess had begun to be seen in terms of an institution through the gathering together of the world's finest players and the awarding of titles.

44 Golombek 1976, p.93 45 Schonberg, p.13-14 90 A History of Chess: Theory

The development of the Renaissance chess style moved swiftly throughout Europe and encouraged developments of the many chess ideas and theories. It is important to present a continuum which establishes a theoretical context for

Hypermodern chess, of which Duchamp made an important theoretical contribution.

The first peoples to adopt chess theory were the Arabs, who developed a very modernist approach to the game, coupling theory with scientific and mathematical methods. Golomek suggests that until the Muslim expansion chess theory was "feeble and elementary." He claims the Arabs actually established the style and standards for theoretical analysis that are in use today. In particular, Arabian chess masters conscientiously documented their games and undertook extensive studies into opening theory. Each Arabian opening was named after its inventor and, as in contemporary chess, players were expected to commit them to memory.

Despite the expansion of chess throughout Europe during the Middle Ages few contributions were made to the development of chess theory. Opening moves were made haphazardly, relying on the skill of the player to work with the situation in which they found themselves. It was not until the Renaissance that chess opening theory was reborn. Players began to recognise that specific openings put them in a better playing position and the game became dynamic.

With that came the need to document these discoveries and with the aid of the printing press circulated the findings.46 To mirror the Arabian approach the

Renaissance players began to give names to specific moves, develop terminologies and to learn the openings by heart. The first important work was completed in

46 Lasker, p.39-40 91 1497 by the Spanish player Lucerna. His manuscript was a collection of 100 documented games in Latin and beautifully illustrated.47 However, players began to realise that it was impossible to memorise all the possible openings that were being compiled. Interest was subsequently raised in the theories that lay behind the opening moves, which could be applied in any situation.48

It was not until the French Revolution that the next great transition in chess theory came about. Revolutionary fervour had an effect of its own upon the game. Known as the romantic period of chess, it was a parallel movement to that of art and music.

The new ideas spawned by the . . . French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and new poetry of Wordsworth, Byron and Goethe, the startlingly free music of Beethoven. What ever it was, . . . launched the romantic period in Chess - and it was as romantic as Byron or Berlioz, or the newfangled paintings of Delacroix 49

The romantic school was set to have an (international) effect far beyond any previous school. This movement emphasised attack and cunning, a surprising combination that involved dramatic sacrifices of important pieces and the taking of intense risks with the aim of checkmating as swiftly as possible. The Romantic school lasted for seventy five years, but it has been said to have produced the most exciting games of chess ever played. Schonberg writes,

Now the idea .. . was attack and combination, a free-for-all over the board, with pieces grandly and recklessly sacrificed in the mad urge to give checkmate . . . A chess game was war, a battle to the death. This was not very precise chess, but . . . the romantic period in chess gave birth to some of the wildest, maddest, most exhilarating,

47 Golombek 1976, p.98 48 It was not until early eighteenth century that the first 'rule' was discovered: Sortez les pieces or Get the pieces out. A chess piece is a term applied to anything other than a pawn and King. eg. Rook, Knight, Bishop, and Queen. The player with the most power in a fighting position was seen to be in a better position to capture the opponents King. 49 Schonberg, p.38 92 most exciting, most ingenious, and most exasperating games in the literature of chess.50

Schonberg writes of Romantic chess, "continuing aesthetic qualities" and that the very nature of romantic chess was a "quest for beauty."51 The games played held an aesthetic quality that was unique and distinct. The reproduced game is a fine example of Romantic chess play. It is fast dramatic and with many exchanges of pieces. At the climax of this game white appears to have sacrificed all of his important pieces yet disguised in his last pieces is a surprising checkmate.

Anderssen vs. Kieseritzky, London 1851

Universally known as "The Immortal Gamethis magnificent example of Anderssen's combinative * *powers is still without a peer in the annals of chess.

1 P-K4 P-K4 2 P-KB4 PxP 3 B-B4 The Bishop's Gambit is less imaginative but more tenacious than 3 Kt-KB3.

3 .... Q-R5 ch A reflex check, a stillborn manoeuvre

4 K-Bl P-QKt4 The Bryan Counter-Gambit. Instead of this lateral demonstration intended to sectionalise the attacker's impetus, many other schemes are available .. .

5 BxB Kt-KB3 6 Kt-KB3 Bastening to drive the Queen away ...

6 ...... Q-R3 Easier would be 6 .... QR4 and .... P-Kt4

7 P-Q3 Kt-R4 Here again 7 .... P-Kt-4 is a more natural way of defending the gambit pawn

8 Kt-R4 A battle guard against 8 .... Kt-Kt6 ch, but 8 K-Ktl (or 8 K-B2) would be a blunder on account of 8 .... Q-Kt3ch, followed by .... QxB.

50 Ibid, p.39 51 Schonberg p.200-1 * combinational chess involved the ability to see several moves ahead and taking a risk that a player will make a sequence of moves or have the power to determine that sequence. 93 8 .... Q-Kt4 This simultaneous attack on two pieces proves illusory. Better would be 8 .... P-KKt4; 9 Kt-B5, Q- KKt3.

9 Kt-B5 P-QB3 In order at last to free the QP and to rid himself of the adverse KKt. There is nothing in 9 .... P- Kt3, because of 10 P-KR4, Q-B3; 11 Kt-B3, and White maintains his advanced posts.

10 R-Ktl This very profound sacrifice pursues without respite the active policy inaugurated by Whites 8th move. The sequel is forced.

10 PxB

11 P-KKt4 Kt-KB3 12 P-KR4 Q-Kt3 13 P-R5 Q-Kt4 14 Q-B3 Threatening to win the encircled Queen by 15 BxP

14 .... Kt-Ktl 15 BxP Q-B3 16 Kt-B3

White has forged two fresh threats in 17 Kt-Q5 and 17 KtxP.

16 .... B-B4 Black seeks salvation in a counter-attack.

17 Kt-Q5 A grandiose conception, giving up both Rooks when already one piece down . . . trying to hold his own.

17 .... QxP Nearing the climax

18 B-Q6 And here is the "immortal" sacrifice.

18 .... QxRch After 18 .... BxB, White mates in four.

19 K-K2 BxR A slight chance of a draw is afforded by 19 .... Q-Kt7, etc.

20 P-K5 With a renewed threat of mate in two.

20 .... Kt-QR3

21 KtxP ch K-Ql 22 Q-B6 ch A last exploit

22 .... KtxQ

94 23 B-K7 mate A forced mate by three minor pieces against the full array of the black forces! (Dr.S.Tartakower, T.DuMont 500 Master Games of Chess, Dover, NY, 1975, p.291-293)

The Romantic period of attack and combination was followed by a period of dogmatic positional play called the Classical period. As opposed to combination and attack, positional play was concerned in building up a strong defensive position that would eventually force the collapse of the opponent. The classical school advocated caution, symmetry, balance, and adherence to strict rules of development. The aim of a classical game was to create an overall balance between white and black as each player attempted to neutralise the other, making moves of the same strength and value. Classical players and theorists believed their style was purely logical, scientific and objective. Players sort to wear down their opponent through the slow gaining of position and material, as opposed to risky dramatic attacks.

Steinitz vs. Blackburne, London, 1876

In this game we are shown how to weaken the black squares in the enemy camp. How to exploit such weaknesses is even more difficult. Here it is achieved by Steinitz in a scintillating manner.

1 P-K4 P-K4 2 Kt-KB3 Kt-QB3 3 B-Kt5 P-QR3 4 B-R4 Kt-B3 5 P-Q3 P-Q3 6 P-B3 Quiet but energetic strategy. After 6 Kt-B3 or Castles, Black could eliminate the "Spanish Bishop" by 6 .... P-QKt4; 7 B-Kt3, Kt-QR4, followed by 8 .... KtxB, etc

6 .... B-K2 Some players prefer 6 .... P-KKt3, followed by .... B-Kt2, etc

7 P-KR3 Useful as is this manoeuvre, White could also get his pieces into action at once by 7 QKt-Q2, Castles: 8 Kt-Bl, P-QKt4 (or at once 8 .... B-K3; 9 Kt-Kt3, etc. It is to be noted that the white QKt, in this variation, effects a clever itinerary "behind the front," which would not be possible after 7 Castles.

7 ___ Castles 8 Q-K2 Kt-Kl As the intended 9 .... P-B4 is going to be prevented, a better plan would be 8 . . . . P-QKt4: 9 B-B2, P-Q4, with play in the centre. 95 9 P-KKt4 P-QKt4 10 B-B2 B-Kt2 This Bishop would co-operate more effectually after 10 .... B-K3

11 QKt-Q2 Q-Q2 12 Kt-Bl This regrouping behind the front is characteristic of this variation.

12 .... Kt-Ql 13 Kt-K3 Kt-K3 Over-hasty. More cautious would be 13 . . . . P-Kt3; and although White can try to roll up the K side, there is now a Bishop (Black's KB) which can keep the black squares under observation.

14 Kt-B5 P-Kt3 Black underestimates the effect of the next move, as regards the black square complex in his game and its deterioration.

15 KtxBch QxKt 16 B-K3 Kt(Kl)-Kt2 17 Castles QR The ideal of "flexibility" caused White to refrain from castling prematurely on the seventh move, and to reserve for himself the option of castling on either side.

17 .... P-QB4 18 P-Q4 At last the opening up of the centre.

18 .... KPxP 19 PxP P-B5 20 P-Q5 Kt-B2 21 Q-Q2 P-QR4 22 B-Q4 The influence of this Bishop, now established on the long diagonal, leaves its mark on the further course of the game.

22 .... P-B3 23 Q-R6 P-Kt5 In order to drive off the terrible QB by KKt-Kt4; but White is in no mood to wait.

24 P-Kt5 The first breach

24 .... P-B4 25 B-B6 Q-B2 26 PxP PxP

27 P-Kt6 The break-through. A furious onslaught

27 .... QxP 28 BxKt A beautiful final point. Black cannot avoid the loss of a piece.

28 QxQ ch 29 BxQ R-B3

96 30 KR-Ktl ch R-Kt3 31 BxP Increasing his advantage. Blackbume could resign here.

31 K-B2 32 BxRch PxB 33 Kt-Kt5ch K-Ktl 34 KR-K1 Resigns.

(Dr.S.Tartakower, T.DuMont 500 Master Games of Chess. Dover, NY, 1975, p.119-120)

In comparison to the Romantic school, their games were slow, uninspiring, and lacking in beauty.52 No longer were there the combinational methods the

Romantics adopted, but a structural, positional build up of force. Many games of the Classical period ended with a draw or stalemate.

52 Lasker 1947, p.ix 97 Hypermodern Chess

The Hypermodern revolution was a chess movement - parallel to the postwar ferment in the other arts - which sought to overturn all the principles of the classical school. Like their allies in modem art who introduced everything from Cubism to Surrealism .... [they] were able to create new works of lasting value.53

After World War One many thought the Classical school had put chess in a dire situation, it seemed all of the life had been taken out of the game. Theorists considered how to subvert the dogma the Classical school had established. In an attempt to overthrow the Classical school a group of players, who became later known as Hypermoderns introduced new theories that proved successful.

Although this subversive school was not fully recognised until after the war, its proponents, like Nimzowitsch and Capablanca, had caused many disruptions several years before.

The development of hypermodernism needs to be understood in a way similar to that in which postmodern is understood - in both hypermodernism and postmodernism we see a double coding: a rejection and an extension of the modern.54 Hypermodernism challenged the laws, methods, lines of play that had been established through the Classical period of chess, and took their scientific approach to a new level. In so doing it made a paradoxical use of the dogmas of the classical school.

The essence of the Hypermodern philosophy was the affirmation of the individuality of each position, and thus a rejection of the notion of the [classical] school that general rules always apply. Thorough iconoclasts, the Hypermoderns spurned the almost sanctified dogmas of the [classical] school to the point of the bizarre (thus the hypermoderns resembled their contemporaries in music and

53 Saidy & Norman, The World of Chess, New York, Random House, 1974, p.154 54 This is also reflected by Postmodernism's dialogue with 'ism's,' for example with say Marxism. (Sim ,p.8) 98 painting, Stravinsky and Duchamp. The Great War had shown the bankruptcy of values handed down by the old society).55

In practice this sometimes meant doing the complete opposite of the 'laws/ and at other times adopting them completely. It is important to note that before long the

Hypermoderns achieved debate and dialogue with the classical school, whose principles crumbled under the strength of the hypermodern games. These dramatic changes took place whilst Marcel Duchamp was creating paintings specifically on the subject of chess.

One of the key proponents of Hypermodernism was Aaron Nimzowitsch. He developed many strange and bizarre openings unsettling to leading classical players. Nimzowitsch played in a Romantic style, yet his theories were grounded in the highest levels of scientific and mathematical theory.56 Facing defeat, those of the Modern Classical school warned against the new developments of Hypermodernism, but could not prevent the revolutionary upheavals within the game. In short, Hypermodern players were beating the formal, Classical, Modernist players. Nimzowitsch said that "the [Classical] School is dead, and you cannot flog a dead horse."57 Nimzowitsch had this to say about the approach of the Classical school, that it had become the symbol of conventionalism within chess,

Followers of the so-called classic school had a marked preference, which is today difficult to understand, for symmetrical variations. Not only that, but they managed to surround this unpleasing circumstance with a scientific cloak. The belief gained ground that many positions and openings had a natural tendency towards symmetry, and that it would be sacrificing the intellect to wish to avoid this heaven-sent gift, and that, therefore, any such attempts

55 Saidy, The Battle of Chess Ideas, Batsford, London, 1972, p.25 56 Saidy & Norma, p.173 57 Nimzowitsch, Chess Praxis, New York, Dover, 1962, p.329 99 were bound to be incorrect and to lead to a loss against sound opposition.58

Nimzowitsch argued that the Classical school believed their theories were grounded in objective scientific methodology, when in fact it was pure artifice.

Nimzowitsch not only exposed their deceptive science but also their deceptive classical aesthetics of symmetry, balance and structure. The hypermodern games had an extremely exotic feel, for they simultaneously used a dynamic use of combinations and movement, coupled with a solid "restriction" of play through a use of "over-protection," which had previously created stagnant positions.

Furthermore they paradoxically put to use a very high form of logic and thought, but at the same time are considered "mysterious" and "discordant." Two words came to be used to summarise the approach of the Hypermodernists: dynamism and offence. The Hypermodernists introduced a new aesthetic to the game that was considered to be ugly in comparison to the beauty of the balance and symmetry of the Classical school. Nimzowitsch remarks,

Today after the [hyper] modern idea has won all along the line, it is surprising to everybody how such a genuine, beautiful and deep line of play . . . could ever be thought ugly.59

Nimzowitsch stresses that any aesthetic that is adopted within chess must be founded in true theory, or suffer the same fate as the aesthetics of the Classical school,

"He who goes by appearances only, can easily arrive at that state in which moves will appear to him to be ugly, which by no means deserve the appellation. Beauty in Chess, after all is said and done, exists only in thought." 60

d8 Nimzowitsch , My System, London, G.Bell & Sons, 1925, p.298 59 Nimzowitsch 1962, p. 329 60 Ibid 100 It is this relationship between beauty and thought that Nimzowitsch felt separated

Hypermodernism from any other chess school.

Nimzowitsch wrote two manuals on chess that are now considered to be the most significant contributions to chess theory by an individual.61 In 1929 Nimzowitsch published his first book entitled My System. It was a misnomer for Nimzowitsch to use the word system, for only a very small aspect of the book deals with a seemingly 'modernist system'. The title is in fact intended to be a play on words of the title of a popular body building and health book of the time of the same name.62 His book was one of the first to deal with the game of chess in its entirety in the same way the body building book dealt with the entire body. Most chess books at the time dealt solely with the openings, or the endings, or one specific aspect of the game. My System brought many isolated concepts, ideas and theories that had existed since the Renaissance together and unified them in a schema of inter-relating principles Instead of presenting a list of laws or procedures on how to establish a certain position, Nimzowitsch presents the theories behind such situations.

Generally Nimzowitsch does not explain how one's game would be built up, or how a player might aim for positions of a certain kind; instead he discusses how to deal with such positions should they arise. This practical advice, copiously illustrated, is of more use to a student than generalisations, often negative, about how to set up his game.63

This form of instruction; that is instruction directed to a very specific situation is mirrored by Duchamp's 1931 treatise on the game.

61 Ibid, introduction to 1936 edition by W.H. Wattes 62 Whyld, p.273 63 Ibid, p.173 101 Returning to the original interview between Ralph Rumney and chess player Francois Le Lionnais, coupled with Keene's commentary, the debate on whether Duchamp was a classical player or a Hypermodernist can be reconciled given the historical perspective as discussed. Within the context of historical postmodernism, as reflected in hypermodern chess, we see in both a rejection of classical theory and its extension. One is able to see in the games of Hypermodernism a modernist scientific approach and the extension of many of the laws founded in the classical chess period. At the same time one is able to see the paradoxical use of these laws in the games of Duchamp both in a classical and a paradoxical approach. Le Lionnais and Keene, did not take into account the theoretical nature of hypermodernism within Duchamp's chess play.

Thus Keene's comments;

The tactical tricks Duchamp produced in that game, his evident love of paradoxical solutions, bowled over his distinguished opponent with extreme speed.64 and Lionnais' . . . in his style of play I saw no trace of... a Dada or anarchist style. 65

are able to be reconciled for the nature of hypermodernism informs us that both qualities are present at one and the same time.

64 Keene, Marcel Duchamp: The Chess Mind, Modem Painters, 2, no.4, Winter, 1989 65 Rumney 1975 102 Chess and Art "reconciled "

A game of chess is a visual and plastic thing, and if it isn't geometric in the static sense of the word, it is mechanical, since it moves: it's a drawing, it’s a mechanical reality. The pieces aren't pretty in themselves, any more than is the form of the game, but what is pretty - if the word "pretty" can be used - is the movement . . . In chess there are some extremely beautiful things in the domain of movement, but not in the visual domain. Its the imagining of the movement or the gesture that makes the beauty, in this case. It’s completely in ones grey matter.66 It is important to make a connection between many of the theories of Nimzowitsch and that of Duchamp, in particular those of aesthetics and thought. Duchamp made many statements that his art was an intellectual activity and he was critical of what he termed 'retinal' art. This is similar to the criticism that the

Hypermodern chess players had for the classical school: classical theories were based on (formalistic) aesthetics and not on the intellect or logic. Duchamp's interest in the intellect went beyond the realms of chess and he wished for a similar intellectual direction to take place in art.

This is the direction in which art should turn: to an intellectual expression.67

There is a mental end implied when you look at the formation of the pieces on the board. The transformation of the visual aspect to the gray matter is what always happens in chess and what should happen in art.68

The observation that the words of Duchamp mirror those of Nimzowitsch have been made by a number of theorists. Some even go so far as to suggest that

Duchamp's Large Glass mirrors diagrams that Nimzowitsch used in his 1925 publication, which divided the chess board in two.69 This is not to suggest that the way to understand Duchamps art is through his chess, but it is helpful to break

66 Cabanne 1971, p.18 67 Sweeny, A Conversation with Marcel Duchamp, Wisdom: Conversation with the Elder Wise Men of Our Day, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1958, p.94-5 68 Marcel Duchamp interview - Gold p.viii 69 Masheck, Marcel Duchamp in Perspective, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1975, p.19 103 down the intellectual barriers that exist between the paradigms of art and chess thus forming a reconciliation of these two paradigms in the person Duchamp.

In 1932, Duchamp, in collaboration with Vitaly Halberstadt, wrote a study on a

specific end game situation titled L'Opposition et les cases conjuguées sont réconciliées

(Opposition and Sister Squares Are Reconciled). Duchamp spoke of it as purely an intellectual study with no real practical application, for the situations being presented rarely came about.70 He said to Cabanne,

The endgames on which this fact turns are of no interest to any chess player: and that's the funniest thing about it. Only three or four people in the world are interested in it, and they're the ones who've tried the same lines of research as Halberstadt and myself. Since we wrote the book together, chess champions never read this book, because the problem it poses never really turns up more than once in a lifetime. These are possible endgame problems, but they're so rare that they're almost utopian.71

Duchamp called his work a "linguistic study," which Damisch claims the Duchamp / Halberstadt text is built around the notion of 'opposition.'72 Using the language from a number of paradigms, especially from aesthetics and philosophy, to explain scientific and mathematical foundations of his chess theories.

Duchamp's and Halberstadt's discussion in L'Opposition et les cases conjuguées sont réconciliées involve end-game problem, and their discussions are very much couched in geometrical language, involving 'translation,' 'displacement,' and 'rotation' around 'charnière' or 'hinges.' Charnière' is the term that Duchamp used in his mathematical notes to mean an 'axis o rotation.'73

70 Damisch 1979, p.19-21 71 Cabanne 1971, p.145-6 72 Damisch, 1979, p.22 73 Adcock, Marcel Duchamp's Notes for the Large Glass: An N-Dimensional Analysis. Mich., Ann Arbor, p.63 104 Saussure directly uses the model of chess to introduce his oppositional theories of language. Damisch quotes from a small section where Saussure explains that it is only through words opposing one another that meaning is created;

a given term having . . . no value except through difference and through its opposition to the other terms in the language.74

and Damisch explains that the relationship between languages and chess is,

Just as the game of chess is entirely in the combination of the different chess pieces, language is characterised as a system based entirely on the opposition of its concrete units.75

The end game is fundamentally a stage of opposition, where the only pieces that remain are the two Kings and some pawns.76 Opposition is defined during the end game when symmetry is presented by the position of the Kings and pawns. The aspect of the end game that Duchamp and Halberstadt were concerned about was when a symmetry or a formalist structure arise and each player is struggling

74 Damisch 1979, p.14 75 Ibid 76This work is concerned with that very special point of the endgame in chess when all the pieces have been lost, only the Kings and a few pawns remain on the board. And this special 'lone-pawns' situation is treated only from the even more particular situation in which the pawns have been blocked and only the Kings can play. This situation is called zugzwang, a German term of international use that indicates this blocked position in which only certain moves, and in a limited number, are possible. In this case (pawns blocked and only the Kings being able to move), even though they make use of conclusions already established by Abbe Durand, Drtina, Bianchette, etc., Duchamp and Halberstadt are the first to have noticed the synchronisation of the moves of the black King and the white King. This synchronisation is analysed at length and forms the basis of their system. In order to win, a white King cannot move indiscriminately without regard for the colour of the square on which he finds himself. Using the terminology of the authors of the book, he must choose a 'heterodox opposition' with respect to the colour of the square occupied by the black King. This 'heterodox opposition,' which represents the real contribution of Duchamp and Halberstadt to the theory of chess, would demand a technical explanation too lengthy to be given here. At any rate, for clarity I would add that the game of chess does contain the idea of 'opposition,' and that Duchamp and Halberstadt have renamed it 'orthodox opposition' in order to distinguish it form the 'heterodox opposition' that they have discovered. This 'orthodox opposition' is something that all chess players know about, and it is far form being a mystery. It is a sure means of winning in certain situations. In fact, 'heterodox opposition' is no more than an amplification of opposition. It is simply applied to a longer number of squares, and it adopts various forms that are missing in the rigid 'orthodox opposition.' (Massot, Bibl. 198/a, p. 51)

105 to keep equilibrium for survival. For there is security in symmetry during such situations because a player is able to restrict or control the moves available to the opponent. At the same time, due to the symmetry, a player may be forced into making a move that will cause their own defeat, otherwise known as a Trap or

Trebuchet (the title of his 1917 Readymade).77 In opposition there is a paradoxical element that interested both Duchamp and Nimzowitsch. Duchamp and

Halberstadt's book attempted to reconcile the two components of symmetrical endgame situations; opposition and sister squares. The squares represent the squares on the chess board that remain relevant to the chess pieces in symmetry. Hence the title of Duchamp's book "Opposition and Sister Squares Are Reconciled." The way that Duchamp explained it is as such,

The "opposition" is a system that allows you to do such - and - such a thing. The "sister squares" are the same thing as opposition, but it's a more recent invention, which was given a different name. Naturally, the defenders of the old system were always wrangling with the defenders of the new one. I added "reconciled" because I had found a system that did away with antithesis." 78

It is important to notice that within Duchamp's study of endgames there is not an attempt to create further opposition by Duchamp positioning himself with one side or the other. Duchamp separates himself from the debates between the Classical school or "old system" and the hypermoderns. He was able to see that with hypermodernism there was an opportunity to create a synthesis between these two opposing understandings of end game theory. In so doing he displays a typically Hypermodern paradoxical attitude to classical theory.

Let us take this one step further towards Duchamp 'reconciling' art and chess.

Damisch makes the point that Duchamp's chess poster designed for the 1925 Third

77 Trap or Le Tabuche is a highly technical chess term, and is also the subject of a readymade by Duchamp 78 cited in Damisch 1979, p.24 106 French Chess Championship mirrored his theory of reconciliation. Duchamp extended the checkers of the chess board until they became cubes with one white, black and a third grey side, grey being the side of reconciliation. In the game of chess it is the opposition between black and white that gives the game its meaning.

However, the 'binary' opposition of chess is defeated by Duchamp in the presence of the grey surfaces.79

Let us return to Naumann's article and interview contained in De Duve's "The definitively unfinished Marcel Duchamp." Francis Naumann presents Duchamp's involvement in philosophical 'reconciliation' in the context of the German philosopher Stirner and the philosophical beliefs of existentialism and nihilism:

That each position or situation exists as a unique entity, thus unable to be located within specific systematic constraints. Naumann points out that reconciliation is not only found in the works of Stirner but has a philosophical tradition that goes back to Plato.80 More than that, 'reconciliation' is present in contemporary theories of structuralist theory, molecular biology, metaphysical poetry, and French symbolist poets. Thus this theme of 'reconciliation of opposites’ is present in a number of intellectual paradigms. The theme is similarly reflected in writings since medieval times up until the time of Carl Jung who specifically wrote on the subject in Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of

Psychic Opposites in Alchemy.81 Yet Naumann warns us that one must be careful in the creation of a theory about Duchamp, for he consciously set out never to repeat himself and thus be defined. Naumann says;

No matter what his sources may have been -if any- his exploration of opposites and their reconciliation seems to have been motivated more by his unwillingness to repeat himself than by any possible willingness to conform to the dictates of a previously established

79 Ibid, p.25-6 80 d e Duve 1993, p.55 81 Ibid, p.53-7 107 system - philosophical, literary - or otherwise. His working method involved a constant search for alternatives - alternatives not only to accepted artistic practice, but also to his own earlier work.82

Naumann states that Duchamp was familiar with many aspects of reconciliation in maths, science, linguistics and philosophy. Therefore the relationship between chess and art in the historical figure Duchamp is contained within a wide intellectual field involving a number of paradigms.

Historian Calvin Tomkins makes the similar observation that Duchamp's fascination with art and chess seems to be bound up in mathematics.83 The importance of logic, rationalism and Cartesian thought are an integral part of Duchamp's work coupled with an anti-rationalistic interest, as seen in the works of Raymond Roussel and Alfred Jarry. Also Duchamp's use of the term Cartesian is implicit of Descartes idea of man as a thinking mind, and matter an extension of motion. In terms of chess this duality is clearly seen, the movements of chess pieces upon a board are the physical expression of the chess player's cognition. In an interview with Tomkins, Duchamp says;

"Chess is a marvellous piece of Cartesianism, and so imaginative that it doesn't even look Cartesian at first. The beautiful combinations that chess players invent - you don't see them coming, • but afterward there is no mystery - it's a pure logical conclusion."84

When the life and actions of Duchamp are placed within the historical context of Postmodernity where we find the merger or reconciliation of a variety of intellectual paradigms. Duchamp's studies into chess drew upon the knowledge and language of science, mathematics, and linguistics. Thus in order to

82 Ibid, p,57 83 Tomkins 1998, p.211 84 Ibid 108 understand the life and actions of Marcel Duchamp we must strive to understand the various paradigms that are reconciled.

109 Chapter 4

"Chess as an art form"

A recent debate

Chess is a sport. A violent sport. This detracts from it most artistic connections... If it is anything, it is a struggle.1

It is not uncommon, for chess commentaries and histories, to suggest that chess is an art form. Marcel Duchamp amplified this sentiment by saying that "every chess player is an artist."2 Yet, there has been little writing or investigation into what Duchamp considered the artfulness of the chess player or the artfulness of the game of chess. To what extent was Duchamp able to say that chess is an art form?3 The importance of this investigation is to determine whether Duchamp was able to look upon the chess player in the same way as he did the artist. And further, to reflect upon how Duchamp the artist and chess player understood the relationship between each paradigm.

The attempts that have been made to investigate the aesthetic nature of chess have strived to establish a common set of criteria for both art and chess. These comparative studies into art and chess rely upon generalisations about art that relate purely to a western modernist perspective founded within Classical art. I will explore a recent theoretical debate between Humble, Osborne, and Ravilious demonstrating the difficulties of their methodologies and theories and to offer a

1 Schwarz 1975, p.70, M.D. quoted by Brandy 2 Duchamp, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. papers, August 30,1952 3 Humble, 1998, p.41 110 solution to their shortcomings. These three theorists have each conducted their investigations in the same manner but each display subtle differences in their argument.

The theoretical basis for these three recent investigations into chess and art all are based on false premises about the nature of the intellectual paradigm of art. These theorists took the paradigm of art and read classical art and classical aesthetics. In doing so they excluded the art of the Pre and Postmoderns and of course the art of non-western civilisations. A set of categories, by definition, excludes all forms that do not conform to the classification. A contemporary classification of art is not defined as a clear set of established characteristics and criteria. Ultimately the paradigms of art and chess, I argue, are not founded upon such generalisation but exist distinctly from one another and are unable to be compared in such a way. Investigations into the artfulness of chess needs to determine what values are commonly held between chess and art. An approach that acknowledges the multiple characteristics, products, values, attitudes, and histories of each paradigm needs to be adopted. Although each of these theorists begins with these limitations, each makes valuable contributions that lead to a theoretical solution to Duchamp’s relationship between art and chess.

P.N Humble, writing in the British Journal of Aesthetics, attempted to address the question, of whether chess is an art form.4 Humble states that this question is one that should be of great interest to the philosopher and the aesthetician due to chess's extensive history, and depth of intellectual activity. He wishes to address a perceived lack in the serious consideration of chess as an art form. However,

Humble’s only understanding of art is the classical one. He aims to establish a set of common criteria between chess and art, thereby raising chess to the level of an

4 Humble, Chess as an Art Form, British Journal of Aesthetics, 33 no.l, 1993 111 art form. In his article Humble remarks that, to his knowledge, very few writers have given thorough consideration to what degree chess can be considered an art form. Quoting Poincare, Hardy and Aristotle, Humble attempts to establish that the aesthetics of chess relates to a universal order of aesthetics. The great works of chess are said to demonstrate qualities of precision, order, commensurability, and harmony, with no trace of ugliness. Humble argues that if the aesthetic criteria is considered universal then the aesthetics of chess and art must be comparative.

Humble's investigation begins by looking into the criteria that are used within the paradigm of chess to determine what constitutes a beautiful game. It is common for chess tournaments to award a ’brilliancy' prize now that a ’beautiful’ chess game has become a definable entity. For Humble the brilliance prize is evidence that the paradigm of chess acknowledges the aesthetic nature of the game. The paradigm of chess understands or defines aesthetics through a process of comparison with an established aesthetic order. Duchamp's long time chess opponent Le Lionnais lists the criteria he has used for judging a beautiful chess game. The criteria is very specific and descriptive.

Correctness, (a). A winning combination (ie, a unified sequence of moves usually involving two or more pieces) must be correct in the sense that it cannot be refuted by skilful defence. It is not judged beautiful if it succeeds owing to an opponent's blunder. (2) Correctness (b). The combination must be the most economical way of winning material or giving checkmate; it should not indulge in pyrotechnics for its own sake. (3) Difficulty. A game should be judged beautiful in proportion to the difficulties each player sets the other and how well each overcomes the difficulties he has been set. Mistakes on the part of either player detract from a game's merit, while dangerous moves enhance it. (4) Vivacity. Dull moves diminish a game’s merit: spectacular moves increase it. Sacrifices in which a player gives up pieces to obtain a stronger position or attack are especially praiseworthy. (5) Originality. A game or combination must be unique. Combinations of a novel, imaginative nature contribute to a game's aesthetic merit. (6) Richness. The greater the variety of combinations, the more beautiful the game is to be judged. As well as combinations that are actually played, there are 'hidden' ones or threats. Although these threats being anticipated and countered by the opponent do not materialise, they give a game greater depth and profundity. (7) Logical Unity. A

112 greatly, it can be said that it is aesthetic feeling w h i c h __oirlw intellectual towards searching, and leads it there.7 8 \9i9/iJii«bfii

Reaching this end point, Humble directly compares the work of t h e c I d arlJlcnhow! and the artist, by summarising the main qualities that Bronstein p r e s e n t ^ ^ J-n939iqni9i2nc

chess offers a medium in which players s t r i v e ^ v iiJz eisyßlq rf: intellectual objects of beauty and imaginative sviißnigßmi bn spectator's appreciation. We may on the basis of t h i s czz> eirü loeiÄßds/iJn

of chess as a work of art in terms of n e c e s s a ry s l — ^ißegsDsn to ar conditions. A game of chess is a work of art if, a n d o n o bnß fi tiß toiio produced primarily with the intention of r e w a r d . = Jfc>*ißW9i lo nobre contemplation; (b) exhibits aesthetic features and ( c ) i s e i(D ) b/KæiuJd:

Once again the problematic nature of this methodology arises. B x -o j c o ’i B .aaaiie

Humble, falls into the trap of attempting to establish a set of c rit^ r* Jfc^eihD lo 198 b determine the artistic nature of the chess game. Bronstein attem pts L J siqm9tt6 ni9lc paradigm of chess to operate as the paradigm of art. Unfortunately ylsifinuholnU excludes much of art. Art is not determined by the intellect nor by b e a t ___r yd ion M possible to generalise about originality! Humble's analysis f in d s sbnil eigylfi/iB unifying the two distinct intellectual paradigms of chess and a r t d i f i bne aagdo acknowledges this dichotomy in his investigation into the a e s th e tics c n > sDil9/it296 9/it he considers the aesthetics of chess are the bi-product of chess by yd 289/iolo aesthetics of chess "yield to the imperatives of the contest." U ltim a i±jsmillU ".fcgti concludes that "chess is a sport," yet making reference to Osborne^ I d A— I ^smodeO ol; that this is able to be overcome. For Osborne, chess:

"offers scope for the creation of intellectual objects c h i d o eb9(do lEuiDsIfe beauty." 9

7 Bronstein and Smaloya, Chess in the Eighties, Pergamon Press, 1982,p.27-8 cited b y H i ___» H yd b9ib8-\£.qv! 8 Ibid, quoted in Humble 1993, p.64 9 Osborne, Notes on the Aesthetics of Chess and the Concept of Intellectual Beauty, B ritis l a 1 TQ riednO Aesthetics, 4 No. 2,1964,p.163 Here, Osborne is using the methodology of comparing characteristics to form a generalisation of art and chess that they are dependent on intellect and beauty. By doing so, Osborne has excluded a substantial number of canonical art objects, valued by the paradigm of art, that contain neither of these qualities. For example, the art movement Surrealism was founded upon anything but intellect, rationality and beauty. It is the nature of intellectual beauty that presents the most pressing problems for Osborne's investigation. For what criteria is one to use when assessing the artness of intellectual beauty when intellectual beauty does not fully characterise art? Osborne suggests that it is because of the contest that we are able to see the aesthetics of the game. In other words, it is the contest that enables the beauty to arise. The implication of Osborne's position is that the competition is similar to the process of creating the artwork. For without the process the work of art is unable to be appreciated. Likewise, without the contest the aesthetics of the game could not be created.

Humble's investigation into the artistic nature of chess concludes that if chess is an art form, and was adopted into the discipline of art, then it could only be considered a "minor" art form. For to Humble "great art" is able to "comment upon the deep human themes."10

C.P. Ravilious responded to Humble's inquiry by recognising a major aspect of Humble's argument that was absent. Ravilious argued that when comparing art and chess one must look to the chess composition, otherwise known as the chess problem.11 The chess composition presents the most similarities between chess and art. Ravilious' methodology was distinguishable from Humble's by adopting specific limitations on his assumptions of art even though his procedure was

10 Humble 1993,p.290 n Ibid, p.62, The chess problem and chess composition is a hypothetical arrangement of pieces that has been design to pose a particular puzzle to a single player. 115 identical. The chess composition was able to be seen as an art form for it had many similarities with a specific form of art. Unlike Humble, who appealed to sweeping generalisations concerning art, Ravilious considered that the chess composition was closely associated with classical architecture and music.

For if the chess problem is an art form it is essentially a classical art form, valuing above all the qualities of harmony, proportion and the subordination of means to ends which are evidenced alike by classical architecture and music.12

Ravilious, from this perspective, suggests that it is the chess composer or the problemist that is most closely associated with the artist. For the problemist is not concerned with the interaction with a human opponent. Rather, the chess composition is formulated by the "contemplative interaction with raw material," the pieces and rules of chess.13 Ravilious even goes so far as to say that the chess composer works much like the musical composer using the diatonic scale to create multitudes of original combinations.14

Ravilious refutes the suggestion that chess is a 'minor' art form.15 Ravilious refers to the musical form of a sonata, as being also unable to "express deep human themes," showing that the chess problem (even chess itself) is fundamentally concerned with form and the creation of aesthetic effects. Ravilious concludes by stating that it is important to understand the kind rather than the degree of expression that each art form is able to achieve.

Humble takes issue with Ravilious' suggestion that chess composition is more closely associated with art than a 'real time’ game of chess. Humble states that it is

12 Ravilious, The Aesthetics of Chess and the Chess Problem, British Journal of Aesthetics, 5 no.4,1994, p.289 13 Ibid, p.287 14 Ibid,,p.286-289 15 Ibid 116 through a game that each player is able to display increasing degrees of intellect and creativity. Humble argues that if black plays a powerful move then white must respond with even greater creativity. Thus the pressure of the competition produces even greater levels of artistic, creative expression and invention than does the chess composition.

However it is Humble's parting gesture that (unknowingly) presents a clue to an approach that enables an investigation into chess and art and does not fall into his,

Osborne's, and Ravilious' repeated theoretical trap. He says that "whatever else it may be, chess is first and foremost an art form whose games are to be enjoyed as works of art."16(my italics) It is from this perspective that an investigation will provide the most reward. It means we are able to view or enjoy chess as art, as opposed to arguing that chess is art. The difference may seem subtle but it is significant. For we are legitimately able to adopt the values, history, and cultures of the paradigm of art and from this position gaze upon chess. A perspective that was common to Duchamp.

In summary, the argument and methodology of Humble, Osborne and Ravilious attempts to closely link the characteristics of art with chess. Humble and Osborne, make generalisations about both art and chess, while Ravilious makes close associations with a specific form of art. Yet Humble, Osborne and Ravilious see art as the dominant discipline and attempt to show why chess should be valued in the same way, or assessed from within it. Each ultimately fails. Art and chess continue to operate as distinct and separate paradigms. Chess and art continue to elude set criteria.

16 Humble 1993,p.65 117 Developing a philosophy of chess

The chessboard is the world: the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.17

Philosophical questions that continue to be raised within the discipline of chess centre around its identity or classification within a broad intellectual field. This tends to be expressed by the question "what is chess?" The problem of identifying chess in relation to any other field is that chess needs to be made legitimate by relationship. Chess tends to be considered marginal to, or a minor discipline of, more dominant social, historical and cultural intellectual institutions.

We have previously seen that postmodern historical methodology offers, via a merging of paradigms, a way of understanding historical figures like Duchamp. This merger has only been able to take place as historical figures have traversed paradigms and bring the values, practices, languages and knowledge with them, thus allowing each paradigm to have a dialogue. This is most clearly evident in the art works of Duchamp that have drawn on other paradigms.

Chess has had a rich and diverse history that offers significant intellectual, aesthetic, philosophic and historical insights that continue to be over-looked by other intellectual arenas. Chess needs to be considered and understood as a distinct paradigm unto itself. Chess is chess. From this perspective we are able to determine where chess fits into the known, historical, cultural, and social worlds. We can also better understand the artist, mathematician, musician, philosopher,

17 Anonymous, Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, "A Liberal Education", 1870 118 who enters the paradigm of chess for we are able to comprehend the arena in which they are entering.

"Is chess a paradigm of life?" was a question asked by William Cluley in the first philosophy of chess published in 1857. The importance of Cluley's investigation was to determine to what degree is chess associated with the "real" world or to what degree is chess a distinct paradigm. In other words, is chess a continuation of life and its experience or is chess a separate world in its own right? Cluley argues that chess is deeply connected to the experience of life itself. Chess is an arena of imperfection, where faultless play is impossible, which directly reflects life itself.18 Cluley takes the position that chess is symbolic, representational, or a simulation of something other than itself. Cluley goes on to say that the skill of chess "is susceptible of the most practical application," a life skill.19 Thus Cluley argues that to understand the philosophical heart of chess we must understand that it is symbolic of life itself.

Historians commonly use the symbolism of chess as a basis for speculation on the origins of chess, some suggesting that the game was invented to occupy soldiers awaiting battle. In other words, it symbolised the battle they were due to enter. It is unlikely that the origin of chess will ever be fully known, however the importance of this question is to draw attention to issues concerning the symbolism and representation of chess. Over the course of history, the names, actions, rules, and associations with the chess pieces have changed dramatically. The pieces that remain today hold little similarity to those when the game originated. However, the representational associations of chess continue to play a significant role in our understanding of the meaning of the game. Indeed, the

18 Why Id, p.306 19 Schonberg, p.22 119 symbolism connected with chess has created such a powerful influence that, to a large degree, it has blinded many philosophical investigations of the game.

The symbolism of chess has been placed onto the game in many layers rather than being inherent in the pieces. It is easily overlooked that modern standardised chess pieces were only established in 1849. In many countries, it is still common to use found objects like shells, or stones for pieces. There are even events where no pieces are used at all. This point may be understood in two ways, that chess pieces are arbitrary objects used to hold all of the layers of meaning built up over the centuries. Or, that the symbolic nature of the chess pieces hold no fundamental meaning to chess other than to distinguish one piece from another, to distinguish their role, power, and movement upon the chess board or grid. Both of these readings are valid. Many pieces of the game are formed as direct visual references; a King, Queen, Bishop, or Knight. The most powerful contemporary chess piece is the Queen who was originally called Vizir or Firz meaning "counsellor," and when translated into Latin the word became Fercia meaning "virgin".20 During the Renaissance, when the game became modernised the Queen was given far reaching powers akin to her status in real life. Other pieces have a symbolic way of moving. The Knight, for example, can jump over other pieces, mimicking the way a horse strides over and around fences and obstacles in its path. Yet there are pieces that remain without a logical symbolism. The Rook was only introduced in the 1500's and is a deviation from the Sanskrit ratha, meaning "chariot." It derives from the Italian rocco meaning "tower." A tower of stone* * capable of moving presents an incongruent use of symbolism.

20 Whyld, p.328 * Rooks are commonly carved with the markings of a stone wall. 120 Many writers have gone to great lengths, to draw conclusions about the symbolism of chess and the fundamental role of giving meaning to the game. One such writer developed a Freudian psychological theory of chess. Psychologist and

International Chess Grandmaster Reuben Fine states in "The Psychology of the Chess Player",

The King becomes the central figure in the symbolism of the game. . . . the King is indispensable, all-important, irreplaceable, yet weak and requiring protection. These qualities lead to the over­ determination of its symbolic meaning. First of all, it stands for the boy's penis in the phallic stage, and hence re-arouses the castration anxiety characteristic of a self-image, and hence would appeal to those men who have a picture of themselves as indispensable, all- important and irreplaceable.21

This aspect is pushed even further when Fine looks to the symbolism of the conflict in the game and how it is commonly played by men and taught from 'father to son.'

Put together, the chess board as a whole may readily symbolise the family situation. This would explain the fascination of the game. Lost in thought, the player can work out in fantasy what he has never been able to do in reality.22

Beyond the symbolic meaning of the pieces, Fine gives the social customs of the game a deeper symbolic meaning.

In view of the profuse phallic symbolism of the game, the taboo on touching has unconsciously two meanings, or, put another way, the ego wards off two threats. One is masturbation (do not touch your penis; do not touch your pieces, and if you do, have an excuse ready). The other threat is homosexuality, or bodily contact between the two men, especially mutual masturbation.23

21 Fine, The Psychology of the Chess Player, New York, Dover, 1967,p. 12 22 Ibid,p.14 23 Ibid 121 Fine summarised that chess is ultimately a contest that symbolises a horrific psychic conflict.24 In Fine's theory of chess, the symbolism of the game constitutes the game itself. Deep psycho-sexual processes are played out which connect in a far reaching way to a fundamental human condition. Chess is seen as deeply connected to and a representation of something other than itself.

It would seem impossible to disassociate the layers of symbolism that have been placed upon chess and to look at what lies underneath. But Fine, acknowledges that chess is a world unto itself, a world apart from what it symbolises. Fine makes the point that chess players enter a world where all else is forgotten; time, wife, friends, family and business. This resonates with the isolated world of chess experienced by interviewer Jean Marie Drot discussed in the previous chapter. While playing a game of chess, Drot attempted to conduct an interview with Duchamp, but found that the game created a world of "silence." Drot was unable to enter the world of chess at the same time as attempting to interview Duchamp in the 'real' world.25

The symbolism of chess continues to hold for theorists the most fundamental meanings associated with the game and yet symbolism continues to disrupt many investigations into Duchamp’s relationship with chess. Art theorists have used

Fine's Psycho-sexual reading of the game of chess to add to Duchamp's many overtly sexualised art works. Arturo Schwarz presents a perspective on Duchamp's chess that is totally dominated by this sexualised reading. Schwarz claims that chess continually reminded Duchamp of his "close" relationship with his sister Suzanne. The 1904 etching by Jacques Villon, Duchamp's brother, shows the children Marcel and Suzanne playing chess together. This brother/sister

24 Ibid,p.68 25 Drot 122 relationship is presented as intellectually and emotionally incestuous by Schwarz. Schwarz's entire reading of chess as a theme in Duchamp's art is overtly sexually referenced.26 Another theorist with this perspective, Patricia Simons, wrote an article titled (Check)Mating the Grand Masters: The Gendered, Sexualized Politics of

Chess in Renaissance Italy.27 Simons quotes Duchamp and states many of his actions to place a sexual reading over Duchamp's chess career. Duchamp's

"sensuous pleasure" in chess and his interest in "mating" placed alongside quotations from Reuben Fine referring to the symbolism of "murderous campaigns of patricide, matricide, fratricide, regicide, and mayhem."28 To Simons chess is fundamentally a game of symbolism.

if chess is performed by a mixed-sex couple, the feminine presence turns the engagement into a sexual alliance and it becomes a destabilised game of chance and passion more than wits and reason.29 Simons cites Duchamp's 1963 performance (PLATE 17) of playing chess with a naked model as giving authority to this reading;

Marcel Duchamp, for instance, followed tradition when he insisted on the intellectual and aesthetic calibre of chess, although he acknowledged ’the sensuous pleasure of the ideographic execution of that image on the chess boards'. His wonder about 'when will I administer checkmate - or will I be mated?' was a potentially sexual metaphor that found performative figuration in a chess game at his first major retrospective of 1963 between himself as a dressed, thoughtful man, and a young, naked woman.30

However, the symbolism of chess in the life and art of Marcel Duchamp is a very minor aspect of a larger aesthetic agenda. Duchamp's well known enjoyment of paradoxical positions must not mislead our inquiry here. Theorists who build

26 Schwarz 1997,p. 107 27 Simons 28 Ibid,p.59 29 Ibid, p.59 30 Ibid 123 their entire thesis upon a perceived importance of sexual symbolism ignore Duchamp's fundamental interest in the game. In 1919 Duchamp designed and carved a chess set (PLATE 18) which did not include a crown upon the King.

Although Duchamp was playing with a subversion of symbolic meaning his intention is to direct our attention away from symbolism towards what lay below.

Art theorist Mark Kremer described Duchamp's chess set as "an iconoclastic gesture."31 A gesture that directs our attention away from the importance of the symbolism of chess only to be refocussed upon the movement of the pieces. The King piece without a crown loses its one identifying symbol and becomes an abstract sculpture shape with specific movements and powers upon the board. Duchamp wrote to Walter Arensberg from Buenos Aires, during a time of deep personal devotion to the game, concerning the effect that chess was having on him.

"I am absolutely ready to become a chess maniac - everybody around me takes the form of the knight or the queen, and the exterior world has no other interest for me other than in its transformation to winning or losing positions."32 and again; "I play day and night and nothing interests me more than to find the right move." 33

Chess drew Duchamp into a singular and isolated world that disconnected him from the greater world. As stated in the opening quotation, chess is a world with its own rules, laws, logic and nature. When we look into the world of chess, below the levels of symbolism and representation, we encounter "a realm of strange shapes and forms which combine to create novel situations.'34 The world of chess becomes an arena of abstract forms, patterns, combinations, and

31 Kremer, The Chess Career of Marcel Duchamp, New in Chess, Alkmarr, Holland, No. 2,1989, p.48 32 MD to Walter Arensberg, June 15,1919, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Arensberg Archives 33 MD to Stettheimer sisters, May 3,1919, Yale Collection of American Literature 34 Schonberg, p.24 124 movements which take place upon a grid. It is the use of these elements of abstraction which can be seen as the "raw materials" of the chess player. Likened to the abstract world of mathematics, chess is said to have a "pure language . . . in its ability to provide precise expression for every thought or concept that can be formulated in its terms."35 When one enters the realm of chess, the player looks upon a given chess position and focuses upon the visual formation of the sculptural forms on the grid. The player's eyes move from one piece to the other, imagining them in a state of abstract movement and transition. An actual movement occurs when the abstract intellectual movements have satisfied the player's future goal. Over the course of a game each player builds up not only a series of possibilities for the future of each piece but also a certain memory or history of each piece. The player engages with the process of discovering the fundamental relationships between the various pieces upon the board and the laws that govern their movement in relation to an overall objective - to checkmate. This aspect of chess was a dominant attraction for Duchamp. The abstract motion of the pieces within the intellectual realm dominated the way he spoke about chess and created art works on the subject. Not an actual visual kinetic motion but an intellectualised mechanised movement that takes place in the player's minds. This realm of abstract movement and combination is far more fundamental to chess than the layers of symbolism which only gild its surface. It is here that we meet Marcel Duchamp within the abstract world of chess.

35 Adler, Mathematics and Creativity, The New Yorker Magazine, 1972 125 Duchamp as Chess Artist

And why . . . isn't my chess playing an art activity? A chess game is very plastic. You construct it. It's mechanical sculpture and with chess one creates beautiful problems and that beauty is made with the head and hands.36

"I play chess all the time/' he wrote to Walter Arensberg. "I have joined the club here where there are very strong players classed in categories. I still have not had the honour of being classified, and I play with various players of the second and third categories losing and winning from time to time.” He had a set of rubber stamps made up so that he could play correspondence chess with Walter Arensberg. He even designed a set of wooden chessmen that he carved himself, all except the knight, which he farmed out to a local craftsman. In May he wrote to the Stettheimers that painting interested him less and less: ”1 play [chess] day and night and nothing interests me more than to find the right move.. 37

The carving of chess pieces from wood or stone, or the choosing of found objects, always carries an aesthetic element. Aesthetics hold a somewhat pragmatic purpose, to distinguish one piece from the other, and to give a symbolic identification as to the nature of the piece. Duchamp uses the traditional / conventional symbolism of chess in the making of his chess designs (PLATE 19) and sets: the horse, tower, bishops mitre, and the crown. Thus, Duchamp's pieces, symbols and boards hold no more artistic value or insight into chess than other makers of chess pieces. It may be understood that chess players have always been artists in the same way as makers of iconic, or religious objects. What can be said about Duchamp's activities in this area is that he was very thorough. Duchamp has worked to create aesthetic objects for all aspects of chess: pieces, wall displays, pocket sets, carved wooden sets, and chess stamp designs. He was truly an artist of chess.

36 Joselit, p.162, Marcel Duchamp, interview by Truman Capote in Richard Avedon, Observation, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1959,p.55 37 Tomkins 1998,p210-ll 126 It is deep below the layers of chess symbolism that Duchamp is encountered as a chess player and an artist. Art theorist Hubert Damisch raised the question as to why we encounter Duchamp in the world of chess at all? Damisch asks; How could he have spent so much of his life involved in nothing but a game? He makes a point of comparison, that Duchamp spent more of his life within this realm than he spent painting, though Duchamp renounced "neither the notion of "artist" nor that of "art."38 How has Duchamp slipped so easily into the realm of chess and become so difficult to follow? I have suggested that it is the art world's scorn and misunderstanding for the game. Yet it is not within the "game" that we encounter Duchamp. The artist moved into the world of chess and it is here that the art theorist and historian loses Duchamp. What is significant is that Duchamp was

able to enter the paradigm of chess only due to his entering as an artist. Duchamp understood the paradigm of chess via the language, values, history, and culture of art. Thus on entering the world of chess we need to find the artist Duchamp. He was not found in the realm of symbolism, though he has left his footprints there, to perhaps lead us astray. When Duchamp entered the chess world he entered as an artist and he proclaimed that art was to be found here. Damisch summarises Duchamp's interest for chess as an artistic activity, and that a game of chess is considered "beautiful" in its own right and is as close as possible to becoming a work of art.39

Damisch understands Duchamp's involvement in chess as deeply connected with his agenda as an artist. Duchamp was not interested in the symbolism of the chess pieces, the layers of historical meaning, or the psycho-sexual elements, but the way that chess was able to evoke abstract and intellectual movement of objects upon a new space or reality. This point Duchamp directly made when he answered the specific question as to the importance of symbolism in chess.

38 Damisch 1979, p.8 39 Ibid, p.9 127 Duchamp said that it holds no importance in the game, although chess acts like a drug of addiction.40 Duchamp later said that the "expression" of chess and the "competitive" nature made it too incongruent with art, and thus is no art form at all. However, for Duchamp, it was not important to understand chess as a fight, or

"sport" but through artistic qualities. This he explicitly stated during a BBC radio interview, when saying that the "competitive aspect was of no importance." 41

Of course, one intriguing aspect of the game that does imply artistic connotations is the actual geometric patterns and variations of the actual set up of the pieces and in the combinative, tactical, strategical, and positional sense. It's a sad expression though - somewhat like religious art - it is not very gay.42

Here Duchamp is presenting three 'artistic' or aesthetic levels concerning the game. First, the immediate visual impression of the chess pieces upon the board. This includes the chequered board, the sculptural formation of the pieces, and the variety of visual patterns that they form upon the board. Second, the abstract movement of the pieces through the 'intellectual' space. Finally, the emotional expression of chess.

The first level of aesthetics were explored by Duchamp in designing (but never making) a chess set. Writing to his sister Suzanne Duchamp he explained,

I am about to launch on the market a new form of chess sets, the main features of which are as follow: The Queen is a combination of a Rook and of a Bishop - the Knight is the same as the one I had in South America. So is the Pawn. The King Too. 2nd they will be coloured like this. The white Queen will be light green. The black Queen will be dark green. The Rooks will be blue, light and dark. The bishops will be yellow, light and dark. The knights, red, light and dark. The white King and Black King. White and Black

40 Drot 41 Kremer 1989 42 Duchamp quoted by Brandy, Schwarz 1975,p.70 128 Pawns. Please notice that the Queens' colour is a combination of the Bishop and of the Rook (just as she is in her movements).43

While the immediate visual impression of the chess set would be striking, its

purpose is to direct our attention to the second aesthetic level; the intellectual

movement of the pieces. This is directly indicated by the colouring of the Queen -

its movement being a combination of a Bishop and a Rook. His engagement in

chess is seen as profoundly relating to the intellectualised movement of the pieces,

to which he has brought the inventiveness of an artist to the aesthetics of the game.

It is the 'artistic' intellectual and abstract movement of pieces that Duchamp, the

artist, values within the paradigm of chess.

Duchamp spoke most openly and comprehensively to Pierre Cabanne concerning

this perspective on the game. This interview sheds light upon a vast array of

Duchamp's chess quotations and references commonly used by historians and

theorists when speaking on the subject.

Cabanne: I also noted that this passion [for chess] was especially great when you weren't painting. So, I wondered whether, during those periods, the gestures directing the movements of pawns in space didn't give rise to imaginary creations - yes, 1 know, you don't like that word - creations which, in your eyes, had as much value as the real creation of your pictures and, further, established a new plastic function in space.

Duchamp: In a certain sense, yes. A game of chess is a visual and plastic thing, and if it isn't geometric in the static sense of the word, it is mechanical, since it moves; it's a drawing, it's a mechanical reality. The pieces aren't pretty in themselves, any more than is the form of the game, but what is pretty - if the word 'pretty' can be used - is the movement. Well, it is mechanical, the way, for example, a Calder is mechanical. In chess there are some extremely beautiful things in the domain of movement, but not in the visual domain. It's the imagining of the movement or of the gesture that makes the beauty, in this case. It's completely in one's grey inatter.

Cabanne: In short, there is in chess a gratuitous play of forms, as opposed to the play of functional forms on the canvas.

43 Duchamp quoted by Naumann, Affectueusement, Marcel: ten Letters from Marcel Duchamp to Suzanne Duchamp and Jean Crotti. Archieves of American Art Journal, 22, No. 4 1982, p.14 129 Duchamp: Yes. Completely. Although chess play is not so gratuitous; there is choice..

Cabanne: But no intended purpose?

Duchamp: No. There is no special purpose. That above all is important.

Cabanne: Chess is the ideal work of art?

Duchamp: That could be. Also, the milieu of chess players is far more sympathetic than that of artists. These people are completely cloudy, completely blind, wearing blinkers. Madmen of a certain quality, the way the artist is supposed to be, and isn't, in general. That's probably what interested me the most.44

Cabanne poses a range of questions directly concerning the relationship between art and chess. Cabanne begins by establishing an opposition to, or a clear distinction between, chess and art. The term Cabanne actually uses is "painting" yet in its context the word "art" is clearly implicit. The question posed to Duchamp points directly to the relationship Cabanne saw existing between chess and art. Cabanne asked Duchamp when he was not in the paradigm of art whether the movements of chess pieces gave rise to anything that he would value as art; and whether Duchamp discovered a new realm or space for art within the paradigm of chess. In affirmation of this, Duchamp continues to present an explanation of this artistic encounter within the paradigm of chess. As in his chess set design, Duchamp draws our attention to the multiple levels operating within the aesthetics of chess, and directs us to the aspect which he holds in the highest regard. Duchamp's interest in the movements of a machine, a mystical machine, as directly and simply illustrated in his 1911 Coffee Grinder, operate also in the realm of chess, where the movements of the grinding mechanism is visible and the process or movement of the coffee through the machine is demonstrated. This is shown most clearly in Duchamp's body of work that make up the King and Queen. There is a clear focus upon the movement of pieces upon the board in intellectual space.

44 Cabanne 1971,pl8-19 130 Developing this further, Duchamp reflects on the close relationship chess has to geometry and mechanical movement. The example he presents is the movement of Calder's mobiles. But a mobile is aesthetic in the realm of the visual and Duchamp says that the aesthetics of chess are not in this domain. It is not even the physical sculptural pieces that are aesthetic or "pretty" - it is the movement of the pieces in intellectual space. The beauty of chess that Duchamp saw was the movement of the pieces within his mind. This is testament to what Duchamp said to Drot,

mechanics in the sense that the pieces move, interact, destroy each other, they're in constant motion and that's what attracts me. Chess figures placed in a passive position have no visual or aesthetic appeal. Its the possible movements that can be played from that position that makes it more or less beautiful.45 And further,

Actually when you play a game of chess it is like designing something or constructing a mechanism of some kind by which you win or lose. The competitive side of it has no importance, but the thing itself is very, very plastic and it is probably what attracted me to the game.46

Cabanne presents Duchamp with a summary of this understanding: The distinction between the aesthetics of chess and art (painting) is that in chess there is a free movement or "play of forms" whereas in art, forms are not considered to be free for they serve a functionally aesthetic purpose. Cabanne has made the battle ground for this debate the issue of values associated with aesthetic functionality. Duchamp corrects Cabanne by saying that the aesthetics of chess are concerned with the "play of forms" in intellectual space, however, the movement is restricted by choice, and each choice brings its own consequences just as the artist

45 Drot 46 Duchamp, Salt Seller: the Writings of Marcel Duchamp, New York, Oxford University Press, 1973, p.136 131 also faces the consequences of their actions. Chess is not free or "gratuitous" as crudely expressed by Cabanne.

Duchamp and David Antin wrote an article (in response to an interview they had conducted) in which they illustrate the choice and consequences within the intellectual realm of chess and the weight of meaning and significance placed upon

a small sculptural object, the chess piece.

but I don't want to talk about that now i would rather talk about chess since we're talking about Duchamp its only right that we should talk about chess chessboards define the action in chess the action is usually on the board similarly if you use the word art you use a board as a perimeter and some where within the perimeter is the site of a action at least it would appear so to someone who knew how to play chess which is an action of a different sort for someone know how to play chess for if two people two chess masters are playing a game and somebody watches that game and he gasps ostensibly this is an act of little significance a man pushes a little piece of wood and moves it over here say and the other man gasps he watches the man next to him doesn’t know why he's gasping the first man is gasping because the player whose move it was has just moved the bishop to a particular position on the board from which will ensure 15 alternative possibilities all of which are not very good.47

This interest in intellectual movement was also Duchamp's concern within painting, 'intellectual expression' was the direction that painting should take. Duchamp said;

I considered painting as . . . a means of expression, instead of a complete aim for life . . . the same as I considered that colour is only a means of expression in painting. It should not be the last aim of painting. In other words, painting should not be only retinal or visual; it should have to do with the gray matter of our understanding, not only the purely visual.48

47 Duchamp and Antin, original published format has been maintained, MOMA, Prestel, 1989 p.100 48 Schwarz 1969,p.20 132 American Chess Master Edward Lasker saw that Duchamp's interest in the aesthetics of chess had profound effects on Duchamp the chess player. Duchamp's aesthetic concerns and insights influenced his style of play which had immediate implications on many of his tournament results. Duchamp was ever the artist within the paradigm of chess.

Schwarz goes on to say that Duchamp's aesthetic interest in chess, coupled with his "unorthodox" style led to many defeats at chess master levels. 49 Duchamp's interest in chess also revolves around the contradiction or paradox that exists between freedom and restriction. Within a strict framework of rules, there is great room for creative and imaginative thought. Duchamp’s Cartesian sentiments, also presented insights into the aesthetic realm of chess.

Chess is a marvellous piece of Cartesianism, and so imaginative that it doesn't even look Cartesian at first. The beautiful combinations that chess players invent - you don't see them coming, but afterward there is no mystery - it's a pure logical conclusion.50

Duchamp's involvement with Hypermodernist chess praxis utilised a Cartesian approach by rethinking and questioning all previously established styles and theoretical principals whilst maintaining a rigorous mathematical and scientific methodology like that of "classical" chess praxis. Duchamp as a chess player closely associated himself with Hypermodernism not only for its Dadaist position but also for its rigorous mathematical and logical approach. It was through a

Cartesian approach that Duchamp wrote Opposition and Sister Squares Are

Reconciled with chess theorist Halberstadt. This text has been observed to involve

49 Ibip, p.66 50 Marcel Duchamp interview with Calvin Tomkins, undated, Tomkins, 1998, p.211 133 the "seemingly aimless manoeuvres of the kings," yet for Duchamp it clearly shows an interest in the subtle and "fragile" logic of chess.51

His intellectual interest in both the acceptance and rejection of logical thought, or of freedom and restriction, became an interest in the middle ground. A middle ground of indifference, which he considered the 'beauty of indifference," and "an acceptance of all doubts."52 This "indifference" reflects Duchamp's adoption of a Hypermodern chess style which is an interplay of romantic and modern forms.

He explained his attitude of indifference to Andre Breton:

For me there is something else in addition to yes, no or indifferent - that is, for instance - the absence of investigations of that type.... I am against the word 'anti' because it's a bit like atheist, as compared to believer. And the atheist is just as much of a religious man as the believer is, and an anti-artist is just as much of an artist as the other artist. Anartist would be much better, if I could change it, instead of anti-artist. Anartist, meaning no artist at all. That would be my conception. I don't mind being an anartist . . . What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way as a bad emotion is still an emotion.53

Duchamp was reluctant to draw a distinction between the artist and the anti-artist, which questions whether a theorist should make the distinction between art and chess. An indifference to the division between art and chess creating a free flow of ideas between the two paradigms. This free flow or traversal of paradigms existed not only between chess and art. Duchamp's interest in this intellectual paradox flowed into his involvement in mathematics. Henri Poincare is believed to have presented Duchamp with a position that emphasised the resolution of the paradox.

Poincare's mathematical text Science et methode has a chapter concerning mathematical invention, which suggests that by using the laws of mathematics one

51 Kremer, p.50 52 Hamilton and Hamilton, BBC interview, London, BBC, 1959 53 Duchamp quoted by Schwarz 1969,p.33 134 is able to be as inventive, imaginative and creative as a chess player. Poincare says that all mathematicians have "a very sure memory" or,

" a power . . . like that of the chess player who can visualise a great number of combinations and hold them in his memory, . . . every good mathematician ought to be a good chess player, and inversely."54

Poincare understood chess to be fundamentally associated with invention. An invention of pure elements of "harmony of number, and forms, of geometrical elegance."55 A paradigm of strict rules and laws exists within mathematics and chess. Within this framework, the practitioner is able to move and act freely and inventively. It has been suggested that chess operated for Duchamp as an arena of invention that he occupied after completing his conceptual and mathematical invention, the Large Glass. 56 Julien Levy said of Duchamp:

Marcel wanted to show that an artist's mind, if it wasn't' corrupted by money or success, could equal the best in any field. He thought that, with its sensitivity to images and sensations, the artist's mind could do as well as the scientific mind with its mathematical memory. He came damn close, too. But, of course, the memory boys were tougher, they had trained [for chess] from an early age. Marcel started too late in life.57

Duchamp was seen by many of his chess opponents to be highly creative, and his use of inventive or "playful" mathematics within the Large Glass, demonstrates Duchamp's freedom of movement between these paradigms. And perhaps it is within this context that we are to understand Duchamp's statement that

54 Poincare, Science et methode, cited in Henderson, Duchamp in Context, Princeton, New Jersey, Princton University Press, 1998, p.186 55 Ibid 56 Ibid 57 Schwarz 1969,p.70 135 "From my close contact with artists and chess players, I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists." 58

Duchamp came to conduct chess as an artist and to conduct his art making as the chess player.

The theorist David Joselit also explores the way that chess and art relate in Marcel

Duchamp's life and art. Joselit sees chess as "living art" within Duchamp's life. In which there is a traversal between art and chess as there is Duchamp's traversal between art to life.

"He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view - created a new thought for that object."59

The photograph of Duchamp's studio from 1917 presents the framework for this theory. Hanging vertically upon a wall is chess as a physical object, as opposed to the intellectual realms of chess, and upon the floor, chess as a conceptual reality via the readymade sculpture the Trap. It is well known that Duchamp played correspondence chess and these vertical boards were commonly used to illustrate his games in progress. The depth of logical methodology saw Duchamp thrive in correspondence chess and endgame studies. In these instances, the slow pace of the game creates little scope for oversights and incorrect moves, thus a purer logic is achieved. Joselit views this vertical chessboard via the paradigm of art stating that it has entered the arena of the painting. The chess board has entered or 'colonised' the paradigm of art via painting.

The rotated chess board suggests that the relationship between chess and art was not necessarily one of displacement but rather of

58 Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. papers, August 30,1952 59 Duchamp, 1917 136 the transformation or transposition of painterly themes into a realm that obviates "the intervention of the hand." 60

The flat vertical image upon a wall, yet the physical transient reality of chess, becomes an "erasable beauty" a painting that can be erased and begun over and over again.61 Likewise Duchamp said to Cabanne:

"at the end of the game you can cancel the painting you are making."62

Duchamp wrote the following note that further expresses this;

Chess = a design on slate / that one erases, / the beauty of which / one can reproduce without the / intervention of the "hand." 63

Thus Duchamp saw the paradigm of chess enlightening the paradigm of art. Chess is an "aesthetic idiom" to mathematically represent an "immobilised" movement as is seen in the Large Glass (1923) and Coffee Mill (1911). The artist chess player is able to "diagram it, to capture it within a grid of measurement."64

Joselit's hypothesis is that chess is a projection into Duchamp's world of the readymade as clearly displayed in the studio photograph. The readymade represents Duchamp's traversal between art and everyday life and chess. Trebuchet or Trap draws directly from a theoretical movement within the paradigm of chess.

This readymade sculpture is created by Duchamp by nailing a coat rack down upon his studio floor. Trebuchet is a tactical chess move that incites a player to make a move that will ultimately cause them to lose a positional advantage, a piece

60 Joselit,p.157-8 61 Ibid, p.160 62 Schwarz 1975, MD interview Cabanne 63 Joselit ,p.l57, Marcel Duchamp, Notes, ed Paul Matisse, Boston: G.K.Hall, 1983, note 273, unpaginated 64 Joselit, 1998, p.163 137 or the game. The analogy of being tripped by the inverted coat rack is obvious, one Duchamp actually encountered when he brought the object home and never got around to mounting it to the wall. Duchamp becomes the chess piece tripped by the Trebuchet that was set by himself. Joselit sees a direct connection between the chess board tipped upon a wall and the coat rack that has been tipped down upon the floor. Each work has entered a new realm via its displacement.

Duchamp the chess player in the realm of art and Duchamp the artist in the realm of chess, both in the realm of the everyday. Joselit understands that within this photograph chess operates as a pivot for understanding the movement from the realm of painting to the realm of Duchamp's readymades. Joselit says that these two works demonstrate the "discursive field that we might call "Duchampian chess."

To understand what is occurring within Duchamp's art we need to understand the way chess operates as a theoretical and practical model. Within the paradigm of chess Duchamp enters the arena of the painting via the chess board hung upon a wall The physical chess object can be aestheticised like that of a painting. Duchamp also enters the realm of the readymade object in his studio and the conceptual movement of correspondence chess through intellectual space via an arena of readymade rules and intellectual visualisation. Through documentation and notation Duchamp geometrically charted the movement of the readymade upon the painterly plane. Then the entire chess object is placed within the context of the everyday. It is this nature of the everyday that prompted Duchamp in

1917 to publish a game of chess between the artists (both poor chess players) Roche and Picabia, in a regular chess column of a news paper. The readers were outraged! Duchamp wrote in response to this Richard Mutt Case of the chess world that;

138 "it had been a game from everyday life: lyrical, heroic, romantic; with blunders, sudden panic reactions, flights of imagination and here and there even a correct move." 65

Joselit believes that Duchamp aimed to invent an art form that was equally as elegant and conceptually beautiful as chess and cites chess as being responsible for

Duchamp's low artistic production during the 1920's. Joselit writes,

The game was no mere idle pastime for the artist, a smoke screen that could block the scrutiny of the art world. Rather, . . . chess, like the machine before it, provided Duchamp with a productive conceptual and aesthetic model that was unquietly capable of synthesising the "spatial realism" or literalness of the readymade and the systemic complexity of the Large Glass. 66

The systemic complexity concerning the Large Glass operates in a similar way to the game of chess. In this work, Duchamp established a conceptual mechanism which is understood to operate via the rules and laws referenced in the Green Box. The way to understand the workings of the Large Glass is via the Green Box. For example Duchamp's use of colour must be understood via the associated notes. Duchamp wrote, "As in geographical maps, as in architects' drawings; or diagrams with colour wash, need a colour key: substantive meaning of each colour used."67 Likewise, for chess, the conceptual workings and movements of the pieces operate via the established readymade rules of the game.68 This comparison between the workings of the Large Glass and chess was also noted by Linda Dalrymple Henderson in her 1983 text entitled The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean

Geometry in Modem Art.69 She claims we see in the works of Duchamp a similarity of approach to chess and art, through the 'geometrical theorising' in chess and in

65 Kremer 1989, p.47 66 Joselit,p.164 67 Schwarz 1969,p.27 68 Joselit, p.173-4 69 Henderson, 1983 139 the notes for the Large Glass. 70 Duchamp believed that language united his life with the Large Glass and with chess. Yet he maintained the belief that language was unable to communicate purely.

"I don't believe in language, which, instead of explaining subconscious thoughts, in reality creates thought by and after the word ..." 71

Duchamp was able to maintain the purity of the Large Glass by adopting and inventing a language of paradoxical referencing and operation, like the specialised and distinct language of chess. For chess is not a language outside the paradigm of chess.* * Likewise the world of the Large Glass does not operate beyond its shattered glass.72

In summary Duchamp was able to create a theoretical union whilst acknowledging the incommensurability of the paradigms of chess and art. A methodology that is not associated with hierarchy or dominance or comparison of criteria, but an approach that enters into the distinct paradigms of art and chess themselves. Marcel Duchamp enters the paradigm of chess holding onto the values of art: Not claiming that chess is art but valuing chess as he values art. This gives a new insight into the game. An insight that cannot come from within the paradigm of chess itself.

70 Ibid, p.124 71 Jones, 1994, p.133 * The language of chess must be understood to go beyond the cleche of chess that are used in everyday speak like "checkmate" to the abstract world of piece movement, engagement, exchange, and combination. 72 M.D to Jehan Mayoux, March 8,1956, Archives of Alexina Duchamp, Tomkins, 1998, p.394

140 Chapter 5.

A thematic study of chess in the art of Marcel Duchamp

. . .Duchamp has come to be considered a forerunner of Conceptual art, as well as Pop art . . .and virtually every postmodern tendency; the great anti-retinal thinker who supposedly abandoned art for chess has turned out, in fact, to have had a more lasting and far-reaching effect on the art of our time than either Picasso or Matisse.1

Duchamp told his biographer, Arturo Schwarz, that it was his two brothers Jacques and Raymond to whom he owed his chess initiation at age thirteen: at the same age that he was introduced to painting.

In the Duchamp household, chess seems to have been a family affair, in the same way that art and painting was, .. .2

In Pierre Cabanne's series of interviews, Duchamp describes being a young painter surrounded by the excitement of new ideas and styles. During these interviews Duchamp spoke little about critical readings of his works, in this period, referring mainly to the influence of other artists and styles. Duchamp acknowledges the influence of Cezanne and Manet that led to the creation of The Chess Game, his first work on chess, which he later considered to be "very academic."3

Cabanne: Your Chess Players are highly influenced by Cezanne's Card Players.

Duchamp: Yes, but I already wanted to get out of that. And then, you know, it all happened very swiftly. Cubism interested me for

1 Tomkins, 1998, p.12 2 Damisch 1979, p.5 3 Cabanne 1971, p.26 141 only a few months. At the end of 1912 I was already thinking of something else. So it was a form of experiment more than a conviction. From 1902 to 1910,1 didn’t just float along! I had had eight years of swimming lessons.4

Similarly Tomkins remarks,

"The influence of Cezanne appeared - somewhat belatedly - in Duchamp's painting for the first time in 1910. The Cezanne retrospective at the Salon d' Automne in 1907, one year after the artist's death, had come as a revelation to many painters in Paris... Duchamp later made conflicting statements about Cezanne's influence on him. He told Pierre Cabanne that in the circle of humorist artists he frequented, "The conversation centred above all on Manet,' not Cezanne, and he went on to say that his own discovery of Matisse had been much more of an event in his life than his discovery of Cezanne. At other times, however, Duchamp spoke of himself as being under the influence of Cezanne for two years or more, and he cited his 1910 portrait of his father as "a typical example of my cult of Cezanne mixed up with filial love."5

His early stylistic adoption of Fauvism and Post Impressionism was later to be met with much self disdain. The artistic position he held during these eight years of "swimming lessons" he later discredited due to his continuing distrust of systemisation and the adoption of ’styles’ by artists. This self deprecation by Duchamp has led to a theoretical black hole as writers on this period follow. The Chess Game and the works surrounding Portrait of Chess players are not considered to be difficult Duchampian ground, and little more than Duchamp's own observations have been offered by theorists. Duchamp was merely playing around with styles, and his Duchampian stamp is not to be found here. Historian

Calvin Tomkins devotes a chapter to this stage titled "Swimming Lessons" after

Duchamp's dismissive comments.6 I argue, however, that this period offers many clues to understanding the way Duchamp began his journey into the theoretical

4 Ibid, p.26 5 Tomkins, 1998 , p. 41-2 6 Ibid 142 paradigm of chess. Through these art works one can see the intellectual perspective that he held for the game itself. This chapter will analyse the works of Duchamp that contain thematic elements of chess. It is not surprising that many misconceptions concerning Duchamp the chess player have dominated readings into these works.

143 The Chess Game (1910) (Plate 2)

There is no attempt at psychological portraiture here; the men are virtually featureless, the women locked away in their separate and isolated reveries. A memory of Cezanne's Card Players seems to hover over the scene, but the painting has none of Cezanne's monumental solidity. The figures inhabit the shallow space awkwardly; the composition is inert. . . . He was still in the phase of what he would later call his "swimming lessons," moving restlessly but tentatively from Post-Impressionist landscapes to Fauve nudes to Cezanne-influenced portraits and figure studies. (Tomkins 1998,p.45-6)

The Chess Game, painted in August 1910 when Duchamp was twenty three, is the first work to contain the subject matter of chess and is considered the first major work of the early part of Duchamp's career. This one work contains or suggests many elements that will dominate his interest in the game and is a point of origin in his understanding of chess as a thematic element in art.

Pierre Cabanne suggests that The Chess Game is not a 'psychological portrait/ implying a shallowness or lack of intellectual significance in Duchamp's first depiction of chess when compared to later paintings. Nevertheless The Chess Game marks the starting point of Duchamp's thematic journey into the intellectual realms of chess and is an exploration into the intellectual experience of playing chess.

The whole essence of the work is held in this shroud of silence and stillness. The painting is set in Duchamp's garden in Puteaux and is an luminous green, fading into a nominal, irrelevant, and undefined surrounding. The minimal depiction of surroundings intensify with the external reality of silence and isolation felt by the subjects in Duchamp's painting. The women are relaxedly poised in a chair and lounging upon the ground. They sit to one side of the painting gazing into nothingness with no communion or conversation, neither engaging the viewer

144 with their eye, each other, the men, nor even other objects in the work. The women are lost, playing no part in the game. They have no relationship with the pieces, like chess men taken in previous moves, they sit and wait. The brothers gaze down upon the chess men with the intensity of scientists witnessing a proof in a petrie dish. The structural positioning of the two brothers is in direct contrast to the women further indicating their 'other worldness.' The brothers form a rigid machine like structure, a theoretical machine, driven by abstract forces to produce metaphysical solutions to problems displayed on the grid of the chess board before them. Their elbows lock their heads and bodies into position like a tripod. The heads of the brothers are focused upon the board. Chess pervades the entire canvas. The game dominates the relationship between the two brothers, and has created the isolating environments that the women find themselves in. The only movements envisaged are the movement of arms, moving a chess piece, or taking a sip of tea. The Game of Chess clearly tells of Duchamp's own experience of the social workings of chess in the lives of his family.

the atmosphere is that of a social gathering where intellectual activities are dominant. The absorbed attitude of the two brothers intent on their game is echoed in the thoughtful looks of their wives, who seem to be lost in daydreaming.7

Like Cabanne, the art historian Arturo Schwarz looks to the role of the brothers and the wives in the painting to show Duchamp's emphasis or meaning behind the work. Both writers mention that each person depicted in the painting is intellectually engaged or occupied to some degree. Schwarz claims that the wives' 'thoughtful looks' emulate the intent or intellectual focus of the brothers. Schwarz seems to be implying that the women are actively engaged in another world just as Duchamp's brothers are. Even though the wives play no active role

7 Schwarz 1997 145 in the painting they are part of the physical world that the brothers have left behind.

I propose that the emphasis that Duchamp has shown in the work indicates that the women are not equals in intellectual activity. Being 'lost in daydreaming' does not echo the brothers but acts as a contrast to their intense intellectual activity. Chess is the focus of this work and, as the title further emphasises, the central theme. Duchamp has cleverly crafted the painting so that the chess board and pieces are almost invisible and the tea setting is in the most prominent position. In contrast to the chess pieces the tea objects are easily distinguishable by size and shape. The game of chess itself is not visible, rather it is an intellectual or imagined element in the painting. In other words, the smallest objects create the most dominant force which pervades all aspects of the canvas. Chess has become a powerful and socially subversive activity that draws the brothers away from the reality of the garden, leaving their wives in isolation.

Tomkins claims that Duchamp's The Chess Game of 1910, painted in the genre and style of Cezanne's Card Players, lacks 'monumental solidity/ However by placing The Chess Game beside The Card Players, and other works showing the bourgeoisie at leisure, it shows something in fact 'psychologically' very powerful. Works created by Seurat, Manet, or Renoir, showing the gaiety, movements, colours, pleasure and companionship, are not qualities of Duchamp's work. Monumental solidity is very much a quality of Duchamp's work. Duchamp has shown how chess creates a timeless monumental solidity.

146 Six Studies for Portrait of Chess Players (October 1911) (PLATE 20) The Chess Players (November-December 1911) (PLATE 21) & Portrait of Chess Players (December 1911) (PLATE 3)

Completed during Duchamp's "swimming lessons," the above series shows his adoption of a form of Cubism, and a clear development in the portrayal of chess.

This series of work was completed over a three month period from October to

December 1911 and is the second phase in Duchamp's development of chess as subject matter in his art works. It indicates a shift in Duchamp's theories and practices of painting and chess. Within this short period of time he experimented with many themes and elements of chess that established his theoretical and philosophical interest in the game. This series consists of six preparatory drawings (Six Studies for Portrait of Chess Players) one oil sketch (The Chess Players), and one major oil painting ( Portrait of Chess Players).

The visual shift from The Chess Game (1910) to this cubist inspired series of 1911 is remarkable. The post-impressionistic world of chess in the Duchamp family garden in Puteaux has been replaced by the visual representation of the intellectual realms of the game. Duchamp will never again return to a naturalistic visual representation of chess players at their game. This series of work is a distinct shift away from retinal art towards the conceptual. These works

demonstrate this shift through his repeated experimentation with, and a traversal between, naturalist and cubist abstraction. Not only they show an artistic development, but were produced at a stage when Duchamp's interest in avant

garde scientific theories had a significant impact on his thinking.

. .. October 1911, when he began the studies fo r his Portrait of Chess Players, completed in December 1911. As the artist later stated, "Using again the technique of démultiplication in my interpretation of the Cubist theory, I painted the heads of my two brothers playing chess, not in a garden this time, but in indefinite space.” I have argued elsewhere that 147 Duchamp's attempt to evoke the mental states of his brothers during a chess game was in part a response to the geometer E. Jouffret's assertion that conceptualising the fourth dimension is analogous to, but more difficult than, playing blindfold chess. Yet the invisible reality of Portrait of chess players suggests a connection to X-rays as well, in that seeing into the brain was a major theme of X-ray literature from the beginning.. .. Because Duchamp entitled the work Portrait of chess players and not simply The Chess Game - as in his 1910 version of the thane . . . .the painting is indeed a mental portrait of these devotees of the game, who, like Duchamp himself, have chess "on the brain."8

Duchamp's development in imagining the intellectual nature of chess from The Chess Game to Portrait of Chess Players is supported by six drawings and one small sketch in oil, The Chess Players. The sketches in preparation for Portrait of Chess

Players are an insight into his aesthetic and compositional concerns.

In Duchamp’s studies and paintings of chess players dating from 1911 male figures are represented as stylised profiles - as though they themselves were pieces being placed, an impression confirmed by his frequent practice of extending the grid of the game board behind and beside the central figures and placing chessmen not only before them where the board should be but all around them, as though they were the principal objects in a game that had escaped its grided precincts and colonised the entire world. (Joselit 1998, p.160)

In Duchamp's first drawing (Schwarz 165; Lebel 76) he loosely establishes many of the elements that underpin Portrait of Chess Players. Two large abstract outlines of Duchamp's brothers meet "head-to-head," touch at the nose. Inside each outline an arm and smaller head is shown in a similarly linear way, which acts compositionally and thematically as a focus on the players thoughts and creates a visual tension. At this point a Rook is being held, or is in the process of being moved by a player. The hand of the other player is positioned near his head in a common chess playing pose which indicates thought. A pose similar to that given to his brothers in The Chess Game (1910). Within this simple multiplication of drawings Duchamp shows both the visual and intellectual

8 Henderson 1998, p.ll 148 realms of chess; the smaller heads and arms representing what would naturalistically be seen of the players. The larger heads represent the more symbolic or abstract contest between these two players. Through the central Rook being held by a player, hand movements are also indicated. An interplay with the lines of the drawings creates an illusionary play of perspective.

The six preparatory drawings, executed in October of 1911 contribute important clues to the iconography of the final Portrait of Chess Players. While the definitive version shows chessmen located only on a plane between the heads of the two players and grasped in one player's hand, the earlier drawings and the painted sketch are pervaded by a multitude of chessboards, chessmen, and even additional heads seemingly representing the "minds" of the players at various stages of the game. The subject of Portrait of Chess Players is, in fact, the mental processes involved in a chess game, the succession of psychological stages of the players. 9

Many subtle shifts are made in drawings one to six but all focus upon highlighting and emphasising the intellectual realms of chess. In the second drawing (Schwarz 166; Lebel 75) there is a move away from the centrality of one chess piece, holding the tension of the game, to multiple pieces floating around the players' heads. These pieces are located in the area between the two players' heads which, this time are not touching. Duchamp has also placed a small sample of the chequered board here. The image has been divided into two distinct realms with a strong central dividing line that cuts the image vertically and suggests the binary opposition of the game: black vs. white, player vs. player. Each head has been placed within a linear frame of differing sizes enhancing the distinction and division of the two players. This drawing contains no overlapping of images and is the only study to introduce naturalistic elements like hair. The tension of the image is held in the area before each player which is intensified by the closeness of the players' heads and the complexity and number of the chess pieces in this area.

9 Henderson, 1983,p.124 149 In the third drawing (Schwarz 167; Lebel 79) Duchamp further develops the themes of the two previous drawings, but also plays with the possibilities of literal symbolic representation. As argued in chapter 4, Duchamp's interest in chess must be understood within the intellectual aesthetic realms and not in the arena of symbolism in this drawing. The King has been given a robe, and the

Knight a horse. This is the only place where such literal symbolic representation has been used by Duchamp in his work, and he abandons this tactic in the ensuing drawings of the series. In the third drawing the small sample of chequered board has been extended towards the viewer to form, in perspective, a dominant geometric plane. Chess pieces move upon this chess board and into the space around the players’ heads. Some pieces have been given exaggerated symbolic elements of chess. The players' heads have been further abstracted with overlapping images, covering the entire image, that move across their faces. Each player, for the first time in this series, has been depicted with a body rising above the chess board, instead of only a head. One player's head is held in his hand resting upon his elbow upon the chess board. This study shows a naturalistic visual representation of the chess player. This naturalistic element is continued with the players dark and dramatic eyes, however all other aspects of the faces have been abstracted. Duchamp has added dark dramatic directional lines of perspective, focusing upon the area between the players' heads where the largest chess piece is located. Duchamp continues his subtle manipulation of line, composition and thematic elements.

It is not until drawing no. 4 that Duchamp includes a third person - the onlooker, which is also present in the oil study and the final Portrait. Drawings no. 5 and 6 include the addition of two heads (onlookers?) outside the edges of the drawing, one on either side. This aspect is not continued in any further works. Stylistically

150 and thematically there are only subtle differences that separate the two oil paintings, The Chess Players and Portrait of Chess Players and the six preparatory drawings.

The Chess Players and Portrait of Chess Players were both painted at night under gas light in an attempt to create a lowering of tones.

It was a tempting experiment. You know, that gaslight from old Aver jet is green; I wanted to see what the changing of colours would do.10

The cubist colours with the added effect of the altered light from the gas lamp emphasises the separation of the chess players from their physical surroundings, absorbed as they are in the intellectual world of chess. This interest in the effects of colour reflects Duchamp's achievement in his earlier painting The Chess Game (1910), with the use of an illuminant green.

10 Cabanne, 1971, p. 26 151 Two Nudes: One Strong and One Swift(March 1912) (PLATE 4) The King and Queen Traversed by Nudes at High Speed (April 1912) (PLATE 5) The King and Queen Traversed by Swift Nudes (April 1912) (PLATE 6) & The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes (May 1912) (PLATE 7)

The above list makes up the next series by Duchamp that isspecifically concerned chess. The difficulty with this series is that it has been commonly included in a larger series which has disguised its significance and emphasis. When one compares Duchamp's own commentary on this smaller chess series, the dates of creation, and the subject matter of the works, a distinction is able to be made. They were created shortly after the Nude Descending a Staircase and Sad Young Man on a Train, (both in December 1911), and fall into a thematic and technical grouping which he defined as a "Cubist interpretation of a Futurist formula."11 The above works commonly understood to belong to part of a larger thematic progression towards the Large Glass. (1923)12 This theory was proposed by Arturo Schwarz, who also claims that by 1912 Duchamp's work was leading towards the themes and artistic processes of his major work Bride (August 1912) and furthermore towards Bride Striped Bare By Her Bachelor, Even (1915-23). From this perspective, all that Duchamp had created, from his Nudes to the Large Glass, is coloured by thematic sexual overtones. Schwarz writes,

The first of the three sketches is entitled Two Nudes: One Strong and One Swift. We have no difficulty in recognising the Strong Nude on the right as the Nude of Nude Descending a Staircase: the formal theme is similar, and the androgynous nature of the figure (again, the bosom is not developed) is even slightly accentuated, as if to placate the anxiety of the Swift Nude on the left, in which

11 Cabanne, 1971, p.36 12 Ibid,, p.35 152 the first draft on the formal theme of the Bride is clearly recognisable.13

It is important to note that our emphasis focused upon the thematic nature of Duchamp's use of chess rather than style. This distinction needs to be made for similarities in style do not imply similarities in theme. Schwarz presents a convincing stylistic development of Duchamp's "Bride” that includes this series of chess works.

We find [The Brides] first formulation in Standing Nude (spring 1911), a preliminary study for the Young Girl of Young Man and Girl in Spring, and we can follow its development in the characters on the left- hand side of Two Nudes: One Strong and One Swift, The King and Queen Traversed by Nudes at High Speed, The King and Queen Traversed by Swift Nudes, The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes; in the characters at the centre at left of The Bride Stripped Bare by the Bachelors; in the two sketches for the Virgin: and in the character on the right side of The Passage from Virgin to Bride. A morphological analysis of the Bride of the Large Glass reveals that her features are derived from a reduction of an essential synthesis of the Bride's structure in the homonymous painting.14

Duchamp's first drawing titled Two Nudes: One Strong and One Swift (March 1912) Schwarz naturally places within this erotic thematic progression and in doing so fails to acknowledge that this drawing is the first in the new series of work concerning chess. Schwarz argues that Duchamp's technical rendering of the drawing and the thematic elements directly flow out of his previous works, and to further this position, there is no suggestion of chess in the title or in the work. Schwarz links this drawing with two other works Virgin No. 1 and 2 completed in July 1912, which result in the two major paintings; The Passage from Virgin to Bride,

(July 1912) and Bride, (August 1912). However Duchamp states in his interview with Cabanne that the Two Nudes were "a first attempt at The King and the

13 Schwarz 1997, p.113 14 Schwarz 1997, p.117 153 Queen."15 In the light of Duchamp's words, this drawing must not be seen from the erotic perspective of Bride or the Large Glass, but as representative of the chess King and Queen.

Schwarzes Freudian investigation of the drawing The King and Queen Traversed by

Nudes at High Speed (April 1912) relates the close relationship between Duchamp and his sister Susan in a psycho-sexual reading of the game of chess. Schwarz gives an ambiguous quotation by Duchamp from an interview with Kuenzli as evidence for such an erotic/chess reading.

With this King and Queen . . . sex is established by the same method of suggestion . .. Motion, you will observe, is supplied by a procession of rapidly moving nudes." 16

What Schwarz fails to allow is that the theme of chess may be viewed as a distinct progression in the development on his previous works concerning chess. Schwarz states that the King and Queen are surrounded by an erotic atmosphere, or sexual wave, in the nudes at high speed. As has been argued in previous chapters, Duchamp's thematic progression of chess is an ever increasing journey into the intellectual realms of the chess player. Given Duchamp's perspective on the game since The Chess Game (1910) he never attached an erotic reading to his chess works of art. Thus in the previous Portrait series Duchamp displays the figures of chess players who are surrounded by the "motions" of chess pieces in the abstract worlds that they occupy. Duchamp has continued to show two figures in the King and Queen series, but this time not two players but two actual chess pieces. Duchamp's King and Queen draws deeper into the intellectual-dimension of the chess piece, and the intellectual movements that surround it. Duchamp described this in a 1964 lecture on his work,

15 Cabanne 1971, p.35 16 Ibid, p.114 154 The title King and Queen was once again taken from chess but the players of 1911 have been eliminated and replaced by the chess figures of the king and queen. The swift nudes are a flight of imagination introduced to satisfy my preoccupation of movement still present in this painting ... it's a theme of motion in a frame of static entities.17

The chess players have been stripped of their naturalistic representation and of their symbolic notation, becoming abstract entities in their own right. The King and Queen are surrounded by the abstract thoughts of the chess players and the actual movements of the pieces.

In the interview with Cabanne, Duchamp specifically speaks of the King and Queen series and relates it to the similar technical rendered works of Sad Young Man and Nude Descending a Staircase. Importantly Duchamp does not speak of any thematic similarities between the King and Queen and the larger body of work that surrounds it. Picking up on this Cabanne asks Duchamp directly what are the similarity between the King and Queen and the Nude Descending a Staircase. Again Duchamp expands on the technical rendering of the work rather than introducing thematic similarities or imposing an erotic reading of the work,

Cabanne: In this "Nude Descending a Staircase," didn't the use of chronophotography give you the idea, perhaps unconscious at first, the mechanisation of man as apposed to perceptible beauty?

Duchamp: Yes, evidently, that went with it. There is no flesh, only a simplified anatomy, the up and down, the head, the arms and legs. It was a sort of distortion other than that of Cubism. On the tearing in previous canvases, thought was only a slight influence. Also, there was no Futurism, since I didn't know the Futurists - which didn't keep Apollinaire from qualifying a "Sad Young Man" as the Futurist "state of soul." Remember the "states of soul" of Carra and Boccioni. I had never seen them; let's just say that it was a Cubist interpretation of a Futurist formula... The Futurists, for me, are urban Impressionists who make impressions of the city rather than of the countryside. Nevertheless I was influenced, as one always is, but these things, but I hoped to keep a note personal enough to do my own work.

17 quoted in Henderson, 1998, p.16 155 The parallelism formula I mentioned also played its role in the picture which followed, "The King and the Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes/' the execution of which excited me more than the "Nude Descending a Staircase," but it didn't have the same public repercussion. I don't know why.

Cabanne: Before, there had been "Two Nudes: One Strong and One Swift," a pencil drawing dating form March 1912.

Duchamp: I've just been looking for it at Mr. Bomsel's, because I'm going to show it in London. He is a lawyer who bought it from me in 1930. This drawing was a first attempt at "The King and the Queen." It was the same idea, and it was done around June 1912, the painting having been done in July or August. ..

Cabanne: Is there a tie between "Nude Descending a Staircase" and The King and Queen Crossed by Swift Nudes?"

Duchamp: Very little, but it was even so the same form of thought, if you like. Obviously the difference was in the introduction of the strong nude and the swift nude. Perhaps it was a bit Futurist, because by then I knew about the Futurist, and I changed it into a king and queen. There was the strong nude who was the king; as for the swift nudes, they were the trails which crisscross the painting, which have no anatomical detail, no more than before.18

Here Duchamp has taken us beyond the players to the pieces and the world that they occupy. The chess pieces have been abstracted, simplified, and intellectualised. Duchamp is bringing into the visual aesthetic realm of art the intellectual aesthetic realm of chess.

Cabanne's interview with Duchamp moves into the related work The King and Queen Traversed by Swift Nudes, (April 1912). A similar work to the King and Queen in many respects, though there is a subtle reduction in tonal and linear elements. These subtle changes in the rendering of the work are also noticeable in the title.

Duchamp has moved from using the term "At High Speed" to the single term

"Swift."

18 Cabanne 1971, p.35 156 Duchamp: It was literary play. The word "swift" had been used in sports: and if a man was "swift" he ran well This amused me. "Swift" is less involved with literature than "at high speed." 19

An intellectual 'play' with words and titles to shift meaning from the formal to a common, popular speech. Once again Duchamp gives no suggestion of a sexual reference in his work.

Schwarz places amongst this series one final drawing titled The Bride Stripped Bare by the Bachelors, (July 1912), and directs his reading or perspective of the entire series from Two Nudes: One Strong, One Swift to The Bride. Schwarz presents this series of drawings as 'evolving' from Two Nudes into The Bride Stripped Bare by the Bachelors. Thus for Schwarz, chess is not the focus of the work but only a part of this evolution towards the Large Glass. For several reasons this 'evolution' is a mis-association of the works. All drawings concerned with chess in this series contain two figures, of which Duchamp directly acknowledges their chess titles or later speaks of their identity. The three drawings were completed over a two month period, at the end of which Duchamp's Major Work, a large oil painting, The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes was created. Within this series there are sublte changes in rendering and titles, but not what could be considered an evolution beyond itself. Much of the qualities of the initial drawing are contained in the final oil painting. The Bride Stripped Bare by the Bachelors (July 1912) is not concerned with chess. The point that confirms the absence of this drawing from the theme of chess is that it was completed two months after Duchamp's final oil painting in July of 1912 and contains the inscription "First research for: the bride stripped bare by her bachelors."

Personally, I find The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes just as interesting as the Nude Descending a Staircase, even though the public evidently doesn't. You know this was a

19 Ibid, p.35-6 157 chess king and queen - and the picture became a combination of many ironic implications connected with the words 'king and queen.' Here 'the swift nudes,' instead of descending, were included to suggest a different kind of speed, of movement - a kind of flowing around and between the two central figures. The use of nudes completely removed any chance of suggesting an actual scene or an actual king and queen." 20

Duchamp's oil painting The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes was painted on the back of a canvas of another work. The two works have corrupted each other physically and thematically. Physically, the two works have been badly damaged through cracking as Duchamp was not aware of the consequences of painting on an old pre-used canvas.

Cabanne: You voluntarily painted on the hack of that canvas? Duchamp: Yes, because I didn 't have any others, and I wasn 't enough of a technician to know that it would crack as it has.21

Thematically, as common readings of this chess painting turn the canvas over to its back for reference. The work from 1910 titled "Adam and Eve in Paradise," is said to be the lens through which the King and Queen is understood, implying Duchamp's intentional use of this particular canvas. Historian and theorist, Lebel writes,

Significantly the final composition was executed on a canvas on the back of which Duchamp in 1910 had painted an Adam and Eve in Paradise. For anyone at all familiar with his symbolism there is more in that than simple coincidence. To the realistic and somewhat grotesquely paradisiacal Adam and Eve of a period still tenderly ironical he opposed the sombre drama of the mechanised King and Queen surrounded or traversed by disquieting meteors." 22

20 Duchamp quoted by Kuh, "Marcel Duchamp:, The Artist's Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, NY, Harper and Row, 1962, p.83 21 Cabanne 1971, p.36 22 Lebel, 1975, Marcel Duchamp as a chess player and one or two related matters, Studio International, Jan, p.13 158 Lebel may be familiar with the use of symbolism in Duchamp's art but has not understood the place in which Duchamp holds symbolism as he regards chess.

When Cabanne asked Duchamp to comment on an entire year's work, from

Spring 1912 to Spring 1913, Duchamp carefully separated his work on chess and his work for The Bride. There is no suggestion of a united evolution, nor does the reading of one theme flow into the other. With works like Chocolate Grinder,

Virgin No. 1 and 2, Bride and the Bachelors Duchamp specifically relates the sexual overtones but he does not do this with his work on chess. Chess must be seen as thematically distinct in the art of Marcel Duchamp.

159 Trebuchet / Trap (1917) (PLATE 9)

A real coat hanger that I wanted sometime to put on the wall and hang my things on but I never did come to that - so it was on the floor and I would kick it every minute, every time I went out - I got crazy about it and I said the Hell with it, if it wants to stay there and bore me, I'll nail it down . . . and then the association with the Readymade came and it was that."23

To the question, "How do you choose a readymade?" Duchamp replied: It chooses you, so to speak. 24

Much has been said and written about the Readymade, which is arguably the most enduring Duchampian legacy.25 The first readymade chosen by Duchamp was Bicycle Wheel in 1914, three years previous to Trebuchet (Trap).

Trebuchet is at the centre of the commentary by art theorist Thierry de Duve concerning the creation of a readymade art object, de Duve explains that a readymade is a "kind of rendezvous"26 or an encounter of an object with an author. Via this encounter the artist selects and removes the object from its original context, gives it a new title, and has a new concept of the object: Art. The title "Art" has been given to the object and it becomes the readymade. The artist’s choice is critical in this process, but de Duve argues that the object plays a role also. Duchamp said, "it chooses you" 27 de Duve uses Duchamp's encounter with the coat rack and the process of it becoming a readymade as an example for this.

Yet, de Duve does not see that Trebuchet is unlike other readymades that Duchamp made. Other readymades are passive objects and involve the artist encountering them in the regular context of the everyday. Works like In Advance of the Broken Arm, Comb, Fountain were all taken out of the everyday and were

23 McShine, La Vie en Rrose, in Marcel Duchamp, New York, Museum of Modem Art, 1973 p.283 24 de Duve, 1996, p.397 25 Joselit, p.163 26 de Duve 1996, p.396 27 Ibid 160 transformed into the Readymade by the artist. Where as Trebuchet was an everyday object out of context when it encountered Duchamp. The encounter with the artist was indeed singular when compared to the other readymades. The out of context coat rack created a dangerous obstacle for Duchamp. In Trebuchet, unlike any other readymade a thematic element was added by Duchamp, and creating an intimate link, between the object, the encounter, and the title of the work. With works like, Fountain, Bicycle Wheel, and Bottle Rack, there was an encounter with the object and the artist, critical in the choosing of the work as art, but not critical to understanding the work. These works also are not references, visually or thematically, to anything beyond themselves. Trebuchet is a readymade circa chess. The title Trebuchet draws directly from a theoretical position in chess. Duchamp, through the title of the work, directs our attention toward the paradigm of chess. Trebuchet is a tactical move that incites a player into a position that will ultimately cause them to lose an advantage, a piece or the game. The analogy of being tripped by the inverted coat rack is obvious.

Chess is the model of the readymade put into action, both within the painterly plane of the chessboard and in the world of everyday life.28

Thus far, chess has represented a shift away from the everyday space and experience of the viewer. The art theorist Joselit (1998) argues that Trebuchet is an instance where Duchamp takes a new direction, showing a projection of the world of chess into the world of Duchamp's studio or into common space. Here

Duchamp becomes the chess piece tripped by the Trebuchet that was set by himself. Importantly this object, which initially gave itself to Duchamp out of context, remains untouched by the artist (except for the act of nailing it down, which is only to maintain its initial out-of-context nature). As Duchamp has continually presented chess as a separate realm from the everyday it seems

28 Joselit, 1998 p.163 161 appropriate that such a readymade will have a similar characteristic. Chess as a theme in Duchamp's art remains in his work out of context from the everyday space of his studio. When the viewer encounters Trebuchet, they are taken into the realm of an object out of context, in the very same way as the artist. In the same way Duchamp directs us to experience the tactical disappoint of the trap in a game. An experience he theorised in his book L'opposition et les cases conjuguées sont réconciliées (1932).

It is worth showing here Schwarz's perspective on the readymade Trebuchet.

Two sentences from James Joyce's Ulysses may give us an insight into the latent motivations for Duchamp's choice of his next Readymade, a common coatrack that he nailed to the floor and gave the title Trebuchet (Trap, 1917): "It would have served her just right if she had tripped up over something accidentally on purpose with her high crooked French heels on her to make her look tall and got a fine tumble. Tableau! That would have been a very charming expose fo r a gentleman like that to witness." . .. this object gratified Duchamp's voyeuristic proclivities; the

same holds true for Trebuchet - all the more so because, as it was fixed to the floor of the studio, it was quite likely to provoke an incident such as that described by Joyce. 29

Here Schwarz is suggesting that the encounter with the object was not concerned with the artist and the object, but was nothing more than a mischievous scheme by a young artist to entrap a virgin. Such a clumsy theory applied with such a broad brush by Schwarz sadly displaces much of the context and content of this work and does not acknowledge the explicit chess reference that Duchamp has made.

29 Schwarz 1997, p.200 162 Why Not Sneeze Rose Selavy (1921) (PLATE 16) Poster for the Third French Chess Championship (1925) (PLATE 15) & Pocket Chess Set with Rubber Glove (1944) (PLATE 22)

The theme of chess in the art of Marcel Duchamp is drawing us deeper and deeper into itself. Via the readymade, the paradigm of chess become part of the physical world around us, to the point where the viewer and artist becomes the actual chess pieces 'trapped' in a game, only to meet a disastrous end.

Shifts away from the dimensions of the everyday into another world was a rallying point for many philosophers, mathematicians, artists, and scientists at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Much thought was given to notions of the fourth dimension, or dimension and non-Euclidean geometry, which entered popular discussion and debate. This scientific, mathematical, and philosophical musing by many of Duchamp's contemporaries had significant influence on Duchamp's art, and also concerned him at a different level as it related to his involvement in, and representation of, chess.

Popular literature connecting mirrors and the fourth dimension would have reinforced Duchamp's interest in the mirror as well. Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass dealt with the themes of Chess and mirrors, with definite overtones of higher dimensions. Although less likely to have been known to Duchamp, George Macdonald's 1895 fantasy Lilith made use of multiple mirrors in a way that parallels Duchamp's interest in A l'infinitif in a "3-sided mirror." 30

Through popular scientific and mathematical texts, Duchamp became fascinated with the theorists Poincare and Jouffret, who used chess to explain the visualisation and representation of the fourth dimension. Jouffret suggested that

30 Duchamp mentions such a mirror in two notes in A l'infinitif (Salt Seller, pp.88, 94, Henderson 1983, p.154 163 it was equivalent to a chess player, playing blindfolded, a number of different games at the one time. Such a player needs to separate themselves from their immediate surroundings and to enter a higher intellectual realm. It was possible to enter this realm he concluded, but "one who devoted his life to it could perhaps eventually be able to picture the fourth dimension."31 What was needed was to stretch ones intelligence to the point of breaking, beyond the 'planes' that contain us within three dimensions.

The work Why not sneeze Rose Selavy is Duchamp's visual exploration into the nth- dimension via chess, inspired by Jouffret (and others theorists). In this work

Duchamp has attempted to represent a chess board that has been moved beyond its usual two dimensions into the fourth dimension. The board is moved into three dimensions, as each square becomes a cube of marble, and the board's fragmentation and its random dispersal in spaces, as the cubes fill the small cage, creates a further shift into the fourth. Importantly the object can only be seen to have entered the fourth dimension if its original 'thought' is maintained. The original thought being that the work is still a chess board.

Noting the similarity between the aleatory accumulation of marble units in this object and the jumble of cubes that forms the foreground of Duchamp's 1925 poster for the French Chess Championship in ice, Herbert Damisch has suggested that the contents of Why Not Sneeze? might be considered a collapsed or dimensionally transposed chessboard. He even stipulates that the number of cubes that would occur in a three dimensional chessboard space (8x8x8=512) is a numerical anagram of the 152 cubed marbles in the cage. 32

This visual theme of falling cubes in space was repeated by Duchamp in a design for the Poster of the Third French Chess Championship, of 1925. He developed the poster from a photograph of building blocks lumped together in a sack made of

31 Henderson 1983, p.73 32 Joselit 1998, p.165 164 netting. The building blocks can be related to the architectural model that Duchamp used in his note that refers to Jouffret.

Duchamps poster for the French Chess Championship of Nice done in 1925 is possibly a geometric illustration of the two- dimensional squares of a chessboard (cases) displacing themselves into the three-dimensional cubes involved in four-dimensional projective geometry (also cases). The cases in Duchamp's illustration are randomly clumped, suggesting that they are organised along the infinite number of axes of four-dimensional space that are each perpendicular to three-dimensional space. 33

His building blocks can be interpreted as three-dimensional 'sections' of a four­ dimensional space, replicated like the mass-produced marble cubes in Why Not Sneeze Rose Selavy T34 Schwarz picks up on a further element present in both Why not sneeze Rose Selavy and the chess poster - chance - represented by the 'chance' grouping of the cubes. Chess is now seen to contain an element not usually associated with the game.35

The one possible formal influence of Bragdon on Duchamp occurred only later, in the 1920's, in Duchamp’s poster for the French Chess Championship held in Nice in 1925. It has been suggested that Duchamp's image is the three-dimensional analogue of a chessboard, with strong die-like overtones, but his tumbling cubes are also very reminiscent of Bragdon's falling cubes of A Primer of Higher Space. Now, however, Bragdon's two-dimensional black sections of the plane cling to the cubes themselves. In 1911 Duchamp had been stimulated by his reading of Jouffret to create a four-dimensional Portrait of Chess Players. Perhaps in his 1925 poster Duchamp was now relying on another author on the fourth dimension to create a private symbol for the game of chess.36

33 Adcock, 1983 Marcel Duchamp's Notes for the Large Glass: An n-dimensicmal analysis. Mich., Ann Arbor, p.61) 34 Ibid, p.82 35 Schwarz 1997, p.708 36 Henderson 1983, p201 165 Furthermore, Pocket Chess Set with Rubber glove is also thematically concerned with Duchamp's investigations into the fourth dimension. Duchamp has combined two examples used to explain the fourth dimension; chess, seen as a kinematic metaphor, and the glove, seen as a rotation metaphor within the fourth dimension, are used by the scientist Jouffret.37

Pocket Chess Set with Rubber Glove was first exhibited in 1944 at an exhibition

Duchamp organised, The Imagery of Chess, at the Julian Levy's Gallery. During the opening night, Duchamp invited the world champion of blindfold chess, George Koltanowski to play five simultaneous blindfold games against Alfred Barr, Jr.,Max Ernst, Fredrick Kiesler, Julien Levy, Dorotha Tanning, and Dr. Gegory Zelboorg.38.

In the Traite, Jouffret uses examples of chess players who play blindfolded to illustrate the difficulty of conceptualising the four­ dimensional continuum. Perhaps like chess, the beauty of the fourth dimension is "completely in one's gray matter."39

Through Pocket Chess Set with Rubber Glove Duchamp is making further reference or quotation about the fourth dimension via chess.

37 Adcock, p. 174 38 Ibid, p.175 39 Ibid, p. 174 166 Nude Seated at a Chess Board (1963) (PLATE 17)

In 1963 Duchamp attended the premiere of his own retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum, and was photographed playing chess with a nude model, Eve Babitz.

The concept for these photographs was not Duchamp's, but photographer Julian

Wasser's.40 Through Duchamps participation in this event, he has given his endorsement. The photographs of this event have become notorious and given that Duchamp was at that time secretly working on Étant donnés (an overtly sexual work that deals with theories of perceptions) it is tempting to see this as confirmation of the eros/chess link. Such an act by Duchamp would seem to rubber stamp the position that Schwarz and other theorists have held. At the time of this event Duchamp was well aware of the multiple theories that had been developed. I suggest that this event was used by Duchamp to build a further layer of mystery around chess. Further enabling him to become the enigma, to put those who sought after him off the scent. A scent that led away from the paradigm of art into the paradigm of chess and traversed the intellectual realms of science and mathematics. It was here, that Duchamp ultimately confronted his Nude, Bride or Virgin. She has been captured for Duchamp at the chess board. But, so has Duchamp been captured by her. The artist becomes the object, the chess player, and the nude becomes the artist, the chess player. It may be seen that neither nude nor artist exist at the chess board, both become the chess player. Their eyes gaze down at the board with that analytical machine like gaze. The nude is thinking the same abstract language as the artist. They meet over common non-retinal ground with equal power. White vs. Black. Artist vs. Subject. The retinal worlds dissolve about them as they dance on black and white squares. Thus, in the retinal world, the artist has become objectified by the photographer, for our gaze. The woman in her nudity, the artist in his aging weakness, both become the chess player.

40 Esquire 1991, 1 was a naked pawn for art. 16 no. 3, p.164 167 PLATE 1

The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)

Oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, and dust on two glass panels, each mounted between two glass panels. 227.5 x 175 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art

168 PLATE 2

The Chess Game

Oil on Canvas, 114 x 146 Philadelphia Museum of Art

169 PLATE 3

Portrait of Chess Players

Oil on Canvas 108 x 101 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art

170 PLATE 4

Two Nudes: One Strong, One Swift

Pencil on paper, 30 x 36 cm Private Collection

171 PLATE 5

The King and Queen Traversed by Nudes at High Speed

Watercolour and gouache on paper, 48.9 x 59.1 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art

172 PLATEÓ

The King and Queen Traversed by Swift Nudes

Pencil on paper, 27.3 x 39cm Philadelphia Museum of Art

173 PLATE 7

The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes

Oil on Canvas, 114 x 128.5 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art

174 PLATE 8

1917 Studio Photograph

Estate of Marcel Duchamp

175 PLATE 9

Trebuchet (Trap)

Assisted Readymade: coat rack nailed to the floor Original lost, dimensions not recorded

176 PLATE 10

3 Draft Pistons

Gelatin silver print, 59.5 x 49.3 Philadelphia Museum of Art

177 PLATE 11

Unhappy Ready Made

Gelatine silver print, 11x7 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art

178 PLATE 12

Coffee Mill

Oil on Cardboard 33 x 12.5cm Trustees of the Tate Gallery

179 PLATE 13

Sad Young Man on a Train

Oil on cardboard 100 x 73 cm Guggenheim Foundation, Venice

180 PLATE 14

Nude Descending a Staircase

Oil on canvas 146 x 89 Philadelphia Museum of Art

181 PLATE 15

Chan\[vior\r\at 'arvcc 1925 du 2au IIT&fitembre a nice IM P O f l'FCUI*EU* OE N ic e

1925 French Chess Championships

Unsighned edition on lightweight paper 77 x 58 cm

182 PLATE 16

Why Not Sneeze Rose Selavy?

152 marble cubes in the shape of sugar lumps, a thermometer, and a cuttlebone a small birdcage Philadelphia Museum of Art PLATE 17

1963 Chess Performance

Duchamp playing chess with Eve Babitz Julian Wesser

184 PLATE 18

1919 Carved Chess Set

Collection Alexina Duchamp, France

185 PLATE 19

A f f i i i * . X- />***••■ / KfcxSP K*Wr jry+jU . U>\A*Z t***. IQKS KSt Kl. 3 k t t C X ¡htctß^- QKJb+ 1~/ f f ^ S T ff fu s u lu i. ¿L sr/QxQ Pxo. 1 I C. totxfct KtX* f*m . 7 ÜxKtP IjM J|| i *4 i ü je /*tu*i* loc asr**- I KU.L«.c4 « i P ^ i *4 ! h o » ü ¿.'.KXKSt :/ ,

fHfc- cC tM ^ A X ^ . 'y u .A ^ j '«*- w ; %!■ |^H K»vVi #vf" FJCR.3 .

. h\ .p .

Arensberg chess score, Philadelphia Museum of Art

C/zess Designs

Philadephia Museum of Art

186 PLATE 20

Six Studies for Portrait of Chess Players

Pencil, ink, and watercolou on paper, various sizes Philadelphia Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum NY, Collection Georges Marci Bianchi, Gstaad, Switzerland, Collection Alexina Duchmap, France Collection of Jacqueline Matisse Monnier, France

187 PLATE 21

The Chess Players

Oil on canvas, 50 x 61 cm Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris

188 PLATE 22

Pocket Chess Set with Rubber Glove

Original lost, dimensions no recorded

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