Marcel Duchampfounder of the Dada movement, is probably the first artist to enhance his reputation by announcing his abandonment of art. He preferred, according to him, to dedicate his time to play chess. This Frenchman, living in New York, assiduously studied the moves and participated in professional tournaments. His supposed retirement from artistic creation ended up being considered a final triumph in itself.
On Tuesday, July 28, at a sports celebration of what would have been the 139th birthday of Duchamphe New York MoMA will organize a chess event in his honor. Visitors will be able to go up to the sixth floor to see the extensive retrospective of Duchampor stay in the lobby, where Susan Polgara famous grandmaster born in Hungary and resident in USAyou will face about 50 artists, historians and other members of the art world in a simultaneous match, that is, an exhibition in which you play against all participants, on 50 different boards, at the same time.
To tell the truth, his rivals in the art world are not exactly great chess talents. “I would trade my entire career in art history to be a great chess player, but I’m not good at all,” he said. Francis Naumannformer art dealer and prominent scholar of Duchampwho promoted the event of MoMA. The objective is to recreate a simultaneous game that took place in the museum in 1974, during the first retrospective of the French artist.
Duchampa thin and reserved man, with the bony face of a saint and a fan of Cuban cigars, died as an artist-thinker, who promoted painting and sculpture beyond mere craftsmanship, bringing them closer to philosophy. Although he was initially criticized for drawing a mustache and a goatee on a reproduction of the and by elevating a store-bought snow shovel to the status of art, he laid the foundation for the snow movement. concept art which took off in this country in the 1960s and established him as its enigmatic prophet.
For him, chess began as a family affair. The retrospective of MoMA It opens with an early painting of great psychological fascination, (1910), set in a garden dotted with vegetation, which represents his two older brothers, also artists, in the middle of their game, immersed in deep concentration. Their closeness contrasts with the distance of their wives, rigid figures who look in opposite directions, apparently absorbed in thoughts other than chess.
Other women in the family expressed their boredom with chess in a more dramatic way. Man Raythe Brooklyn-born Dadaist, claimed in his memoirs that the first wife of Duchamp, Lydie Sarazin-Levassor —tired of spending long nights alone in an apartment Paris while her husband went out to play chess with his friends—demonstrated his discontent by gluing the game pieces to the board. While this did not cure him of his addiction, it did precipitate the couple’s divorce.
Fortunately, his second marriage Duchampwith Alexina (Teeny) Sattlerwho grew up in Cincinnati, was much more harmonious. It helped that she was passionate about chess. In 1959, the couple moved to West 10th Street in Greenwich Village expressly to live across from their favorite place, the Marshall Chess Clubwhere they played daily, and kept silent about the clandestine, room-sized installation that absorbed him for years despite his public boast that he had stopped making art.
“Life begins at 76 with a solo exhibition,” he wrote. Duchamp optimistically to a friend in 1963, when the Pasadena Museum of Art (at the moment Norton Simon Museum) organized the first retrospective of his work. In a famous photograph taken at the museum, he appears sitting playing chess with a naked woman, whose dark hair covers her face. It was about Eve Babitza 20-year-old art student who would later achieve renown as a novelist and memoirist in California.
The photography of Julian Wasserfrequently reproduced, is often considered an icon of avant-garde audacity. However, it can also be interpreted as clearly outdated. The image of the septuagenarian male genius basking in the attention alongside an anonymous, naked, much younger woman may seem like a betrayal of the empowering female spirit of chess.
And, frankly, chess is a proto-feminist game. (I clarify that I will participate – dressed – in the simultaneous game of the MoMA).
Originally invented in India In the 6th century, chess was redesigned into Middle Ages to reflect the power that queens held in feudal society and offer entertainment to the nobles who lived in their gloomy castles. Of all the pieces, the queen is the only one that can move quickly across multiple squares in all directions in a single move. The king, on the other hand, can only move from one square to one, as if suffering from plantar fasciitis.
Can we say that chess represents an art form? DuchampOf course, I thought so. “I have come to the conclusion that, although not all artists are chess players, all chess players are artists,” he generously commented in 1952, in a speech before the Chess Federation of New York State.
On the other hand, many intellectuals have dismissed the game as a waste of time. Although it is known that Albert Einstein played, he publicly declared that chess repressed free thought, “chaining the mind and brain.”
Some of the participants in the simultaneous game of MoMA they share an equally unromantic view of the game. “Chess is not an art form,” he says. Amy Cappellazzoprominent artistic advisor. “It does for your brain what yoga does for your body. In art, there must be the possibility of innovation, and in chess there is no such possibility. You cannot change the rules of the game.”
It’s true. Chess, after all, is a game of war or military strategy set on a mini-battlefield. In my opinion, it remains at odds with the very essence of artistic creation, which requires artists to go within themselves and try to bring new forms to life, rather than crushing the competition.
Artists would do well to ignore their enemies and focus on their own creative development. “The main enemy of an artist is time,” he said. Marcel Dzamaa Canadian artist based in Brooklyn, whose neo-surrealist drawings and films are filled with images of black and white chess boards, and who will participate in the simultaneous exhibition of the MoMA.
Regardless of whether chess is an art form or not, chess board design certainly is. The sculptor Carol Bovewhose vibrant retrospective in the Guggenheim Museum is in its final weeks, has furnished the museum’s lobby with five elegant chess tables, whose knights and bishops have been transformed into heavy steel pieces, each a minimalist mini-sculpture. Visitors are invited to sit and play, defying the usual no-touch rules.
He MoMA has a large number of chess sets designed by artists; However, if you touch the of Man Raycirca 1926, an emblem of good taste in design that has been widely replicated, will immediately throw you out of the building. Oversized silver and black pieces—cones, pyramids, and other austere geometric shapes—rise from a horizontal plane, giving a feudal battlefield the vertical energy and specular reflections of a 20th-century city.
By the way, Man Ray described his chess level as that of a simple “wooden pusher,” according to the new academic book by Larry List, .
Certainly, not enough has been written about another chess game in the world. MoMAhe of Yoko Onocirca 1966, a brilliantly effective instrument designed to thwart murderers and promote a worldview that invites peace. The creation of Onoan all-white board with white pieces, prevents players from distinguishing their kings and queens from their opponent’s, thus dooming any attempt to defeat the enemy. (Later versions of the game are titled ).
Today, instead of Dadaism, we have data and gaming platforms like Chess.comwhich have fueled a global boom in the popularity of chess. A wave of younger players arrived in 2020, when the Netflix series it became a success. She replaced the popular image of chess nerds with the seductive glow of Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy), a big-eyed redhead who sported an early ’60s-style hairdo and stayed up in bed at night, visualizing chess moves on the ceiling.
It is true that she was addicted to sedatives, a completely unrealistic detail, according to Judith Polgarthe grandmaster who presides over the simultaneous game of MoMA. In a recent telephone conversation, Polgar57 years old, the eldest of three sisters who began their lives in Budapest as chess prodigies, and the author of a memoir with a title as significant as stressed that she would not have been able to become the first woman to obtain the title of grandmaster in 1991 if she had followed the example of Beth Harmonwho consumed pills. “I firmly believe in the importance of having a healthy body and a healthy mind,” he explained. “I never drank alcohol, except for the New Year’s Eve toast.”
In the next simultaneous game of MoMA, Polgar has graciously agreed to grant a time advantage to his opponents. You will have much less time than others to make your moves. You must move from one board to the next (and the next, and the next), calculating 50 moves in the blink of an eye, while each of your opponents uses that time to make a single move.
Just like Duchampbelieves that chess games have a fierce beauty. “When one looks at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of Michelangelo“You know it’s beautiful, and the same goes for chess, it just takes more knowledge to understand it,” he said. “You have to know how the pieces move to appreciate the beauty in front of you. It is a hidden beauty.”
Source: Infobae
