chess beats art: the end of the blindman

“We do not have a record of any games played by Duchamp during these early years in New York, but, in Rongwrong, a magazine he edited that came out in only a single issue, he published the transcription of a game played between his friends Henri-Pierre Roché and Francis Picabia. The stakes were high: if Roché won, Picabia would have to stop publishing 391, a journal that had come out in four prior issues; if Picabia won, Roché would have to cease the publication of The Blindman, a review that had appeared only twice. After thirty-four moves in an unorthodox but interesting game, Roché resigned, and Blindman ceased publication.”

(Francis M. Naumann, Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess, p. 10.)

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