Calvin Tompkins: Something I've been wondering about is your general attitude toward science. Isn't your own work influenced by science?
Marcel Duchamp: No. Ironically, yet. It's an ironic way of giving a pseudo-explanation of it. I don't believe in the explanation, so I have to give a pseudo one: pseudo-scientific. .. Even the idea of perspective was a sort of forcing myself to be at the service of a scientific idea, to get away from the free hand, as I often said... When I came to do my Chocolate Grinder I used perspective to design it, so that the form wouldn't be dictated by my taste at all. It was forced on me by perspective.
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| The Chocolate Grinder, 1965-66, etching, 12 13/16 × 19 13/16 in. |
CT: I see. You're using science in a way as a means to art.
MD: Yes, to avoid other things. It was a game.
CT: You've talked about stretching the laws of science, and I wonder if this is spoken about in the same spirit as you trying to break with tradition, to avoid what feels inevitable.
MD: .. It's a very interesting thing to decode whether something is a law.. It's just an illusion of causality. I've never believed in causality. Because you light a match and see a fire you consider that a law. It's a very nice word, law, but it has no deep validity. That's what I think. It's just a habit.
CT: One of nature's habits?
MD: Yes. What we don't know of it probably is not habit. What we know is just the limited perception we have of these happenings and facts. We are so fond of ourselves, we are little gods on earth. I have my doubts, that's all.
CT: Do you accept any laws on principle?
MD: No, I mean the word law is against my principles. At least I think it's unnecessary to call it law, as though it were inexorable. The concept of causality to me is very dubious. It has a doubtful character. It's a convenient form of making life possible.
The Afternoon Interviews, conducted in 1964
To Have the Apprentice in the Sun (Cyclist), 1914, Pen, ink, and graphite, 10 3/4 in. x 6 3/4 in.
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