Marcel Duchamp (Voices and Piano) (Live in Mexico)

I have a very definite theory

I call it a theory so that I can be wrong

That a work of art exists only when a spectator has looked at it

Until then it's only something that has been done

That might disappear and nobody will know about it

But the spectator consecrates it by saying

"This is good. We'll keep it."

And the spectator in that case becomes posterity

And posterity keeps the museums full of paintings, don't they?

My impression is that these museums

Called the Prado, called the National Gallery, called the Louvre

Are only receptacles of things that have survived

Probably mediocre paintings

Because they happen to have survived

There's no reason to make them so important and big and beautiful

There's no justification for that

That label of beautiful

They have survived

Why have they survived?

It's not because they are beautiful

It's because they have survived by the law of chance

And I think my real feeling is that a work of art

Is only a work of art for a very short period

There's a life in a work of art but it's short

Even shorter than man's lifetime

I call it twenty years

After twenty years an impressionist painting

Has ceased to be an impressionist painting

Because the material, the color, the paint has darkened so much

It's no more what the man did when he painted it

Alright, that's one way of looking at it

So I apply this rule to all art, artworks

And they, after twenty years, are finished

Their life is over

They survive, alright, because they are curators of art history

And art history is not art

I don't believe in preserving

I think, as I said, a work of art dies

It's a thing of contemporary life

In other words, in your life you might see things

It's because it's contemporary with your life

It's been made at the same time as you were alive

And it has all the requisites of the definition of a work of art

Which is to make

And your contemporaries are making works of art

They are works of art at the time you live

But once you're dead they die too

The reason is that ideas can survive more without distortion, without-

Death is longer for ideas because the language

Stays on for at least a few centuries

In other words, fifty years ago we liked this

A hundred years ago we liked that

Showing the doubtful judgment of humanity on works of art

And that's why I like it to be only twenty years old

To have a short life

I didn't care

Yes, I learned it in Lille

I was lunching with a friend of mine who had it

And Miss Dreyer, she couldn't announce it to me

It was very funny

So, in fact, when she was so much moved by

The fact that she had to announce it to me

My reaction was a very cold reaction

To help her, you see, of charity

Instead of despair

And it didn't-, it was exactly like that

It was not despair at all

I have a very great form of philanthropy of that kind

To accept any malheur as it comes

I mean, I'm not going to fight it too much

I don't fight back

I'm against the word "anti" because it's a

Bit like "atheist" as compared to "believer"

And an atheist is just as much 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, "an" artist

Meaning no artist at all

That would be my conception

I don't mind being an anartist