Rational intelligence is dangerous and leads to ratiocination. The painter is a medium who doesn't realize what he is doing. No translation can express the mystery of sensibility, a word, still unreliable, which is nevertheless the basis of painting or poetry, like a kind of alchemy.

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp

Alchemy Basis Dangerous Doing Express He Intelligence Kind Leads Like Medium Mystery Nevertheless Painter Painting Poetry Rational Realize Sensibility Still Translation Unreliable Which Who Word

Related Quotes

Alchemy is a kind of philosophy: a kind of thinking that leads to a way of understanding.

— Marcel Duchamp

AlchemyKindLeads

A painting that doesn't shock isn't worth painting.

— Marcel Duchamp

PaintingShockWorth

Marcel, no more painting; go get a job.

— Marcel Duchamp

I like living, breathing better than working... Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral. It's a kind of constant euphoria.

— Marcel Duchamp

BetterBreathBreathing

Painter after painter, since the beginning of the century, has tended toward abstraction. First, the Impressionists simplified the landscape in terms of color, and then the Fauves simplified it again by adding distortion, which, for some reason, is a characteristic of our century.

— Marcel Duchamp

AbstractionAddingAfter