Article in May 4 New Yorker by Hilton Als, “The Trickster,” confirmed my backwardness in art
theory. But I had already tabbed Franco-American Marcel Duchamp as the deepest philosopher of art of
the 20th century.
As a clueless teen, I spent an evening in the mid-1950s in his NY chess club, London Terrace, while hearing whispersof what an important man was among us. We did not speak. I had my hands full with trying to subdue a Caro-Kann Defense for my Marshall C.C. team.
My coffee-table book “The World of Chess” has two Duchamp paintings – one a lush traditional depiction of two men playing chess while two women gaze away; the other a cubist bombshell in the vein of his famous
“explosion in a shingle factory” that wowed the famed Armory Exhibit of 1913 – “Nude Descending a Staircase.” He was a shape-shifter who impinged on all the trendy art movements.
It was a myth that he gave up art for chess, having played on the French Olympic team; he never
stopped working on art.
An art “expert” in NYT directly contradicted Duchamp by denying that chess is an art. He declared,
“All chess-players are artists.”
The exhibit, which I have not viewed, includes all his works but the permanent two in Philly. It closes Aug. 22, and opens at Philadelphia Art Museum Oct. 10. Seeing it is not so much to dazzle the eye as to stimulate the brain.
Ebay has dozens of books about Duchamp, one from a chess angle. Current catalog runs $75. I may skip it, having recently purchased “Man Ray & Chess” for a lot more than it costs online. From artist/photographer
Man Ray, I had one degree of separation, thru famed musician Artie Shaw(also a chess buff).
-Anthony Saidy 7/30/26