letting go of duchamp

  There’ s an interesting contrast in the ways Matisse and Duchamp regarded chess. Duchamp was obsessed with the game and almost seemed to prefer it to art, playing it throughout his life and giving much of his time to its study and practice. Matisse was not interested in board games and never played them. Matisse “ A walk with Matisse is a real botany lesson. He knows all sorts of things about the growth of fruit, the nature of the soil, which have nothing to do with painting. To say that he is interested in such diverse subjects reminds me that he plays no games. Matisse, at 74 years of age, has never touched a a game of cards or chess or draughts .When, after too sustained an effort or during a convalescence, someone suggested that he played something for amusement, he refused, saying like Degas, ‘And what if it bores me to distract myself?’”  Marguette Bouvier in conversation with Matisse 1944     “One must study an object a long time to know what its s