“The impulse that made him travel to another city and lead a completely isolated existence, free of family ties or distractions of any kind, also seems to have made him want to preserve that experience, intact and inviolate, for himself alone. He hinted at this in a late filmed interview with the French documentary filmmaker Jean-Marie Drot. ‘In 1912 it was a decision for being alone and not knowing where I was going,’ Duchamp said. ‘The artist should be alone . . . Everyone for himself, as in a shipwreck.’ ”

(Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp, p. 93.)