a chatterer and a thief

“Marcel Duchamp was quick to recognize that the artist moves from the margins of society to the centre. He always resisted becoming ‘bëte comme un peintre’ – ‘stupid like a painter’ – and understood art as an attempt to school his intellect. For Duchamp, the artist is highly integrated into society, so that, after his or her emancipation from the commission and the patron, he or she is positively obliged to pursue the education and expansion of his intellect. Quite rightly, Duchamp insisted on being more than just a chatterer and a thief in an artist’s smock, because he saw himself confronted with a society that pursued the exploitative logic of capitalism and therefore dwelled in intellectual homelessness.”

(Florian Waldvogel, from “Each One Teach One”, p. 22 in Dexter Sinister’s Notes for an Art School.)

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