Fields of force: Marcel Duchamp and chess

“ Fields of Force” was the title of an article written by the polymath and chess-lover George Steiner for the New Yorker in 1972, giving his slant on the celebrated Fischer v Spassky world championship in Reykjavik. I have borrowed the phrase to revert once again to the life and works of that master of chess and artistic genius, Marcel Duchamp (above). I have long held the opinion that Duchamp was the most influential artist of the twentieth century. Picasso and Dali might have been “greater”, but nobody paints in either of their styles; they were both sui generis . In contrast, every modern artist works almost ipso facto under the tutelage of Duchamp. 

In the October 2021  British Chess Magazine,  the art critic Peter Herel Raabenstein was quoted, no fewer than three times, attributing to Duchamp the aphorism: “While not every artist is a chess player,  not  every chess player is an artist.”

For someone who has published a book on chess and art this is an egregious blunder — and in triplicate. Duchamp, of course, said the opposite: “All artists are not chess players –  all chess players are artists ”. In fact, in later life, he channelled his own artistic forces through the medium of chess.

I conducted some thorough research on Duchamp for my rebuttal of Raabenstein in a later issue of the BCM and I rely on much of it here for readers of TheArticle , who may not yet have experienced the delectations of the UK’s most venerable magazine for chess specialists.   

It is widely known that Marcel Duchamp played chess. But how good was he?

Two “facts” are popularly “known” about Marcel Duchamp and chess: one is that in 1923 he “gave up art for chess“, and the other is that in 1927 his new bride glued his chess pieces to his board, in an act of desperation at the attention he was paying to them rather than to her. 

These mythical aspects of Duchamp’s relationship with chess have tended to obscure the reality. That reality was sufficiently impressive for him to be awarded the title of Master by the French Chess Federation in 1925, and for Duchamp to represent France in no fewer than four Chess Olympiads from 1928 to 1933.

Duchamp had been passionately attached to chess from his youth, as might be inferred from his paintings of 1910 and 1911,  The Chessplayers  and  The Portrait of Chessplayers . The renowned chess writer Harry Golombek, in his  Encyclopaedia of Chess , wrote of the latter work that it gives a more complete picture of the process of chess-playing than many a stylised representational painting. Mark Kremer, writing in  New In Chess International Magazine , added that: “The emphasis in these pictures is not on the a delicate nature of a game of chess, as seen by a possible observer (compare Duchamp’s own  The Chess Game , 1910, on which the two later works are a huge advance), but on its insular quality, its isolation  vis-à-vis  the outside world.“  

In 1923, Duchamp declared his major work  The Large Glass  permanently unfinished and returned to France to make his passion into his second career. This was at the age of 36, a time when many chess grandmasters today are beginning to feel that they are gradually approaching veteran status.

Although he was a late starter, Duchamp not only played for France, but also wrote one chess book, translated another, covered chess for  Le Soir  newspaper, became an official of the French Chess Federation and finally was active in the organisation of chess events and fundraising for the game.   

What sort of player was Marcel Duchamp? The  Bulletin of the French Chess Federation  of 1924 described him thus:

“ … étant donné son jeu profond et solide… sa froideur imperturbable, son style ingénieux… font de lui un adversaire redoutable ”. (“Given his profound and deep play… his imperturbable coolness and his ingenious style, together these qualities make him a redoubtable adversary.”)

Remember those opening words: étant donné , they will recur. Many people have been puzzled by the similar title of Duchamp’s final installation from 1946. It is my belief that they hark back to this first official recognition of and encomium to Duchamp’s chess skills.  

It was bad luck for Duchamp that his best known game is a loss to Le Lionnais from Paris, 1932. This game happened to be annotated by the celebrated Franco-Polish grandmaster, Xavielly Tartakower, in the authoritative Austrian magazine,  Wiener Schachzeitung . This brought the game a certain prominence, but Le Lionnais himself was also not slow to trot it out (e.g. in his interview for  Studio International , 1975) whenever he was asked about Duchamp and chess. 

It should be added that Duchamp had drawn a game with grandmaster Tartakower himself in 1928, and later in the Olympiad at Hamburg 1930, he held the American World Championship Contender, Frank Marshall, to a draw. In 1929, he beat Koltanowsky, several times Belgian Champion and one-time World Record holder for the greatest number of opponents faced in a blindfold simultaneous display. The tactical tricks Duchamp produced in that game, his evident love of paradoxical solutions, bowled over his distinguished opponent with extreme speed.

The opening moves were as follows:

White: George Koltanowsky
Black: Marcel Duchamp
Paris Tournament, Round 8, 1929
Indian Defence 

  1. d4 Nf6
2. c4 e6
3. Nc3 d6
4. e4 b6

This type of development of the Queen ‘ s Bishop was closely associated with Aron Nimzowitsch, the celebrated iconoclast, chess teacher and grandmaster of the 1920s. Indeed, the whole strategy of holding back the Black centre pawns was enthusiastically advocated by Nimzowitsch in his books and articles.

Much of the accepted wisdom about Duchamp as a chess player stems from the 1975 interview with Le  Lionnais  in  Studio International . Le  Lionnais  stated:

“ In Duchamp ’ s style of play I saw no trace of a Dada or Anarchist style, though this is perfectly possible. To bring Dada ideas to chess one would have to be a chess genius rather than a Dada genius. In my opinion Nimzowitsch, a great chess player, was a dadaist before Dada. But he knew nothing of Dada. He introduced an anti- conformism  of apparently stupid ideas which won. For me that ‘ s real Dada. I don ’ t see this Dada aspect in Duchamp ’ s style… Duchamp applied absolutely classic principles, he was strong on theory – he ‘ d studied chess theory in books. He was very conformist which is an excellent way of playing. In chess, conformism is much better than anarchy unless you are a Nimzowitsch, a genius. If one is Einstein, one says the opposite to Newton, of course; if one is Galileo, one contradicts everyone, but otherwise it ’ s safer to be a conformist .”  

I suggest, however, that Le  Lionnais  was simply unaware of the degree to which Nimzowitsch, author of the incredibly influential book,  My System , and a potential Candidate for the World Championship by 1927, had shaped Duchamp ’ s style. Even the opening of the oft-quoted game that Duchamp lost with the white pieces to Le  Lionnais  (1. c4 c5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3.g3 g6 4. Bg2 Bg7 5. d3 d6 6. e4) had been introduced by Nimzowitsch at Dresden in 1926. Similar instances of Duchamp borrowing  Nimzowitsch ’ s opening ideas proliferate throughout his games. 

I can prove the Duchamp/Nimzowitsch connection quite easily. On a visit to the chateau of Duchamp ’ s widow, Teeny, at Fontainebleau just outside Paris, in the company of Barry Martin, then Vice President of the Chelsea Arts Club, I discovered hidden in a cupboard Duchamp ’ s copy of Nimzowitsch ’ s seminal work of chess strategy, Chess Praxis , the sequel to My System, annotated by the artist.

One can also detect philosophical resonances between Duchamp and Nimzowitsch in their attitude to chess (in  Nimzowitsch ’ s case) and to chess and art with Duchamp. Take, for example, the following statement by Duchamp: “ Chess is a sport – a violent sport. This detracts from its most artistic connexions… if anything it is like a struggle.” And Nimzowitsch,  à propos   the International Tournament at San Remo in 1930: “ In its fascination and its rich variety, chess is a mirror of the life struggle itself, but to a similar degree it is exhausting and full of pain.”

Further points of contact emerge from an examination of the reasons that may have attracted Duchamp to chess. Some writers have maintained that the symbol of the opposition of two hostile “sides” runs through Duchamp ’ s artistic work, for example, the Bride ’ s domain and the Bachelor ’ s territory in  The Large Glass .  The Times of June 14, 1966, speculated that Duchamp ’ s lifelong passion for chess might be thought an expression of his dislike for the trappings that cover purity of thought. Man Ray, Duchamp ’ s friend and designer of a chess set which Duchamp owned, said that chess is a game where the most intense activity leaves no trace. In essence, Duchamp and Nimzowitsch were both in search of criteria to determine the aesthetics of chess, and they arrived at identical conclusions.

Kremer, writing in  New In Chess , had this to say of Duchamp ’ s attraction to the game: “ In Chess, beauty is not so much visually observable but,  selon  Duchamp, is, ‘ completely in one ’ s grey matter ’ .” He continued that Duchamp is interested in “ cerebral art, in which there is an appeal to the viewer ‘ s intelligence and imagination, more so than in the average sensuous offerings.” 

To support this I now cite George Heard Hamilton,  Inside the Green Box : 

“… for Duchamp art is a mental act, a fact of consciousness. His life, a long one, and his career as a professional artist, so disconcertingly short, have been dedicated to the deliberate annihilation of what he calls ‘ retinal painting ‘ that sort of art which appeals principally or only to the eye, which he believes began with Courbet and reached its greatest splendours and deceptions in our times with Picasso and Matisse. What he wanted, we might say, was not a painting of something, but painting as something, painting which should not only represent an object but be in itself an idea, even as the object represented might not be actual in the phenomenal sense, but rather a mental image. As he said in 1945 – I wanted to get away from the physical aspects of painting, I was interested in ideas – Not merely in visual products. I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind.”

Chess is a marvellous field for this kind of operation, for the beauty of a move in chess lies in the thought behind it, not in the move itself. Nimzowitsch wrote in  Chess Praxis : 

“ The aesthetic feeling in chess must be firmly anchored in appreciating the thought behind the moves, that is the point. Those deluded by outward appearances only may mistakenly condemn moves as ugly, when they are not so at all. Beauty in chess is, in the final analysis, conditioned solely by the quality of thought.”

It seems that the aims of Duchamp, Nimzowitsch and perhaps even Dada were not so far apart after all. What follows is a detailed record of Duchamp ’ s involvement with chess. 

Principal chess happenings in the life of Marcel Duchamp:

1910: he paints  The Chess Game .
1911: paints  The Chessplayers  and  The Portrait of  Chessplayers .
1918 : studies   Capablanca ’ s games in Buenos Aires (Capablanca was to become World Champion in 1921) and designs his own chess set. The King had no cross on the crown.
1920: becomes member of Marshall Chess Club, New York.
1923: competes in first serious chess tournament in Brussels.
1924: plays chess against Man Ray in Ren é Clair ’ s film  Entr ’ Acte .
1924: wins Chess Championship of Haute  Normandie.
1924: competes in Chess Championship of France (he plays a further three times up to 1928).
1924: competes in World Amateur Championship, Paris. Duchamp shares 21st place in B Group.
1925: declared a Chess Master by the French Chess Federation. He designs the poster for the French Championship held in Nice.
1927: marries Lydie Sarazin-Lavassor  on June 7th.  Daughter of a wealthy car manufacturer, Lydie, 15 years Duchamp ’ s junior. She left him after approximately one week, after she had glued his chess pieces to his board.
1928: shares First Prize at the Hy è res International Tournament with O ’ Hanlon and  Halberstadt.
1930: Andr é Breton criticises Duchamp in The Second Manifesto of Surrealism for abandoning art for chess.
1930: represents France in Hamburg Chess Olympics, playing on second board behind the World Champion, Alexander Alekhine.
1930: exhibits  L ’ Echiquier  Mural   at Paris.
1931: becomes member of Committee of French Chess Federation and French Delegate to the World Chess Federation, a post he holds for six years.
1931: represents France in Prague Chess Olympics.
1932 : publishes chess   book, L ’ Opposition   et Les Cases conjugées sont reconcilié es with Halberstadt in a limited addition of 1,000 copies.
1932: wins Chess Tournament in Paris. Plays against Buenos Aires Club by radio.
1933: translates classic book by Eugene Znosko-Borovsky into French ( Comment il  faut  commencer  une   partie d’Échecs ).
1933: represents France in Folkestone Chess Olympics (Duchamp ’ s last Olympiad).
1935: captain of French team in First Correspondence Olympics.
1937: commences writing chess column for   Le  Soir .
1939: makes top score (9 points out of 11) in Correspondence Chess Olympics.
1944:  Pocket Chess Set with Rubber Glove:  Duchamp ’ s contribution to the Art Exhibition,  The Imagery of Chess  in the Julien Levy Gallery in New York (other contributions are from Andr é Breton, John Cage, Max Ernst and Man Ray).
1946: commences work on  Etant  Donné s , concealing chessboard under twigs beneath nude figure. I had often wondered about the origins of the title for this work, until I recalled the opening words (quoted above) of the encomium on Duchamp from the Bulletin of the French Chess Federation from 1924.
1952: collaborates with Hans Richter in the film  8×8 , based on chess.
1954: oil sketch of  Chessplayers , 1911, is acquired by the Mus é e  National  d ’ Art Moderne  in Paris; Duchamp ’ s first work in a French public collection!
1963: on the occasion of his first Retrospective Exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of Art, Duchamp plays chess in front of  The Large Glass  against a naked female opponent, Eve Babitz.
1964:  Game of Chess with Marcel Duchamp , a filmed interview for French television by Jean-Marie Drot, wins first prize at the Bergamo International Film Festival, Italy.
1965: in New York, he exhibits his work,  Chess Score , a record of a game he drew in 1928 with Grandmaster Tartakower.
1966 : organises chess exhibition, “ Hommage  à Caissa”, at the  Cordier  &  Ekstrom  Gallery, New York, to benefit the Marcel Duchamp Fund of the American Chess Foundation.
1967 : attends Monte Carlo Grandmaster Tournament, won by Bobby Fischer.
1968: in Toronto takes part in  Reunion , a musical performance staged by John Cage, in the course of which Duchamp, Teeny  Duchamp (his replacement, chess -playing consort for the unsatisfactory glue wielder) and Cage play chess, the moves played electronically triggering musical notes. 

  Of contemporary artists, Barry Martin, a friend of both Teeny Duchamp (as we saw, Marcel ’ s widow) and of composer John Cage (Duchamp ’ s faithful disciple) is the most prominent chess player. Barry now contributes a monthly chess column to The Enquirer . 

Some 5 minute games by Barry Martin follow:

1.  Scotch Game  (Black)
2.  Sicilian Defence: Closed, Traditional  (White)
3.  King’s Pawn Game:  (White)
4.  Owen Defen ce( White)
5.  Three Knights Opening  (White)

A new book on Duchamp  Spellbound by Marcel: Duchamp, Love and Art; (Ruth Brandon, Pegasus, pp. 241) declares that Duchamp   was made famous by his painting “ Nude Descending  a Staircase” (1912) which I have personally seen hanging over the main staircase in Teeny Duchamp ’ s chateau. Meanwhile, the 1917 exhibition in New York organised by the Society of Independent Artists, was a show chiefly remembered today for the scandal of Duchamp ’ s rejected “Fountain” (1917), a urinal signed R. MUTT that outraged almost everyone. Simultaneously, across the Atlantic from New York raged the carnage of the First World War in France that Duchamp, though medically exempt from military service, had come to New York to escape. So, while his generation of Frenchmen was being slaughtered, according to the review in The Spectator , Duchamp himself dreamed up conceptual art and – even better, to his mind – played chess.

Raymond Keene’s latest book “Fifty Shades of Ray: Chess in the year of the Coronavirus”, containing some of his best pieces from TheArticle, is now available from  Blackwell’s .

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