Marcel Duchamp, the art of chess

Francis M. Naumann

"In the early 1920s a rumor circulated through the art worlds of Paris and New York that Marcel Duchamp - the artist best known for Nude Descending a Staircase, the sensation of the Armory Show of 1913 - had decided to stop making art in order to devote his life to playing chess. Although Duchamp made no effort to refute this claim, and had indeed entered into regular tournament play, he would never abandon his career as an artist. For the remaining years of his life, he sought opportunities to combine the two endeavors. Not only was the theme of chess an ever-present motif in his work - from his earliest paintings to works of his final decade - but on more than one occasion he buried coded messages in his art that could be fully comprehended only by proficient players of the game. He went so far as to suggest that the activity of playing chess be considered a component of his...