An avid chess player, Marcel Duchamp had a set of rubber stamps made with which to record games and play by mail. Just as he conceived of art as a mental activity, he was attracted to the aesthetic dimension of chess: “Objectively a game of chess looks very much like a pen-and-ink drawing, with the difference, however, that the chess player paints with black and white forms already prepared instead of inventing forms as does the artist.” Imagination and invention are required for both pursuits, Duchamp notes, but he adds: “while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”
Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), Chessboard Configuration, 1919. Chessboard printed in orange ink, with rubber stamps of chess pieces printed in black and purple inks, and graphite, on off-white paper, 4 3/16 x 6 13/16 inches (11.4 x 17.5 cm). Gift of Salle Vaughn in honor of Charles Ryskamp on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Morgan Library and the fiftieth anniversary of the Association of Fellows, 2000.16.
© Marcel Duchamp / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York