Art History ISSN 0141-6790 Vol. 23 No. 1 March 2000 pp.

35±55

On the Hot Seat: Mike Wallace interviews Marcel

Duchamp1

Naomi Sawelson-Gorse

Introduction

Mike Wallace became a celebrity by interviewing celebrities on television. Actor,

man-about-town talk-show host, quiz-show MC and panelist on New York
television since the late 1940s, the thirty-eight-year-old achieved stardom in 1956
with a late-evening programme, Nightbeat, which transformed the `typically
polite' interview format into something else ± an `inquisition', Time called it.2 The
contrast of Wallace's `prizefighter's face' and `velvety voice of a musical-comedy
baritone' was aptly appropriate to his `ability to probe convincingly and assert
glibly, to be sulphurous and rude ± all in the name of inquisitiveness and good,
often gamy fun'.3 New Yorkers were hooked by the seemingly affable Wallace,
who grilled his guests intensely; reportedly `as many as a million and half' tuned in
to the programme televised locally on an independent station, WABD.4 Within
weeks, Wallace's vexatious probings ± which some thought `sadistic' ± elevated
his salary with a changed affiliation.5 In May 1957 WABC began televising Mike
Wallace Interviews nationwide and viewers across the United States could now
watch Wallace's `pyrotechnic questioning' and `insistent interrogation'.6 He
certainly went for the jugular. Of the aged socialite Elsa Maxwell, Wallace
inquired `how old are you?'; of the slovenly restaurateur Toots Shor, `why do
people call you a slob?'; to the obese Mary Margaret McBride, how much she
weighed.7 Newsweek summed up his interview style as just shy of `insulting' but
nonetheless `tactless'; Wallace himself called it `abrasive'.8 Speaking to a reporter
from Look, Wallace pronounced his tactics as if he was a crisis therapist: `I go
after the core of a person . . . his attitudes and his motives . . . I try to sting him into
revealing himself.'9
So why were some willing to be on the `hot seat'10 and undergo the harangue?
Lambs to the slaughter ± no, indeed. Wallace offered several explanations, though
adamantly denied that his guests were `publicity freaks'.

There are some who want to deliver what we call intellectual commercials.
There isn't ± hasn't been, over a period of years ± room enough in
television for just talk. And a good many people would like to get on and
talk about things which interest them. Then there are the people who want

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108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
ON THE HOT SEAT: MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEWS MARCEL DUCHAMP

some currency exchange. Well, we don't exchange any money (pay our
guests), but we exchange a plug for a play, a book, a movie, a lobbying
movement, or something of that sort. Finally, there are some who are pure
exhibitionists.11

Plugger or exhibitionist, who, exactly, was Wallace's ideal guest ± or `ideal

victim', as Newsweek phrased it.12 The `kind of guest I want,' Wallace reflected,
was someone who `has some ideas and is willing to talk about those ideas, if he is
willing to face conflicting things he has said and things other people have said
about him, if he likes a little abrasion, then perhaps the program can generate
some light rather than heat.'13 As for himself as the ideal interviewer, far from
sensationalizing events or creating sensational events ± both of which Wallace had
been accused ± Wallace proclaimed his overall `ambition [was] to stimulate the
people intellectually.'14
Wallace continued his quest after his affiliation ended with WABC. In 1959,
following a stint on another quiz show, Wallace was back on local New York
television and on another independent station, WNTA, with a weekly programme
Mike Wallace ± Interview & News.15 On 12 December 1960 his televised
interview was with the Nobel scientist Linus Pauling; that same day, Wallace
taped his interview with Marcel Duchamp, which was aired several weeks later on
18 January 1961.16
Duchamp's appearance on Wallace's programme was the first American
televised dialogue with the artist, done specifically for the new medium,
conducted by a veteran television interviewer known for his confrontational
style. For a number of other reasons, it was very different from the artist's
television interview debut on 15 January 1956, when Conversations with Elder
Statesmen aired previously filmed excerpts of Duchamp's dialogue with a museum
director.17 There were more television sets in more US households, for one. The
1960 census counted 40 million families who owned at least one television ± a
whopping 88 per cent compared to the previous decade's meagre 11 per cent.18
And art on television had become a fairly desirable programming ploy by the late
1950s. High viewer ratings were scored when `a California jockey' won several
thousands of dollars `for his ability to identify paintings and sculptures' on a quiz
show, and when the actors and art collectors Vincent Price and Edward G.
Robinson similarly tested their connoisseurship on the immensely popular The
$64,000 Challenge.19 Also receiving high viewer ratings was Wallace's interview
with Frank Lloyd Wright, the so-called `iconoclast of architecture',20 eighty-eight
years old at the time. The `most drastic proof of art's ascendant popularity' was,
however, neither its mention on quiz shows nor its focus of talk shows, according
to one art critic commenting on the phenomenon of `Art on TV'. Rather, it was
that art `so often supplies the dramatic plot for ambitious TV programs.' In fact,
James Thrall Soby noticed certain similarities between the protagonist of one
television drama based on a Broadway play, Reclining Figure ± `a rich American
collector' with an `irascible temper' who jealously guards `his treasures' ± with the
late Albert C. Barnes, who was equally renowned for his `superlative collection' as
for barring almost everyone from seeing it. In another drama specifically made for
television, One Coat of White, a painter called `Lautisse' ± whose name was `a

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 ON THE HOT SEAT: MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEWS MARCEL DUCHAMP

provocative amalgam of . . . Lautrec and Matisse' ± was likened by Soby to

Duchamp (`Lautisse has not been painting for about a dozen years, thus
suggesting a comparison with Marcel Duchamp, who put away his paints at the
height of his career').21 But Duchamp's first television appearance in 1956 on
Conversations with Elder Statesmen offered no such high drama or vicarious
excitement. Perhaps the interview with the director of the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, James Johnson Sweeney ± filmed in 1955 at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art ± was regarded like the programme series itself:
`often stuffy', its producers and interviewers forgetting `that the great men it
approaches gained their reputations by being human'.22 Intellemercials without
Wallace's fireworks. But `being human' had its downside on television, and not
only for those on Wallace's hot seat.
As 1960 began, signalling the end to the Eisenhower presidency, Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr., wrote in Esquire magazine that the United States was `on the
threshold of a new epoch of [its] national life'.23 Television was instrumental in
determining that epoch from its start with the first-ever televised debates between
the presidential candidates, Vice-President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F.
Kennedy. Arthur Krock, the veteran Washington correspondent for the New York
Times, proposed that television would provide `a basis, not previously available,
for simultaneous comparison of [the candidates'] personalities, physical and
mental, and of the capacity of each to expound his views under the immediate and
constant challenge of the other'.24 Yet a different leverage emerged to rate the
candidates: their television personality, or tube image. Critics perceived Kennedy as
having `an image closer to the TV hero', of appearing `more nonchalant' and `less
anxious to sell himself' than Nixon.25 Television viewers agreed. The Gallup Poll's
statistics reflected the incremental rise of Kennedy and the downfall of Nixon based
solely on their tube image over the course of their four televised debate appearances
in September and October.26 In November 1960, Kennedy won the election. Foes as
well as supporters of Nixon blamed his failure on television.
How would Duchamp fare in a face-to-face dialogue under the television
lights? A reporter on Wallace's staff thought well. Even though Duchamp had `no
regrets' and was, overall, a `very serene fellow', there were certain questions that
he would probably dodge, enough to make the programme interesting and
confrontational.27 But by 1960 Duchamp was a veteran at hedging, bets and all.
He surely was used to being grilled; and television was not the only mass medium
that aired interviews with him. In November 1959 BBC Radio carried George
Heard Hamilton's dialogue with Duchamp (taped previously in New York),
repeating the transmission in August 1960.28 In December 1960 and into the
following January Radio FrancËaise broadcast segments of Duchamp's recently
taped interview with Georges Charbonnier.29
To have a dialogue with art cognoscenti was one thing; to be on Wallace's hot
seat was another. Having an interview with Wallace not only implied celebrity
status of oneself by oneself, but also one's cognizance and consent that that status
was of mass, popular, interest. Was Duchamp willing to explore such
ramifications?
The art critic Henry McBride had asked his long-time friend about the artist's
abhorrence of fame when New York's Rose Fried Gallery held the Duchamp

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FreÁres et Soeur exhibition in 1952. Duchamp's response was unfathomable to him.

`Can you side-step fame?' McBride queried.

Marcel Duchamp does try to avoid fame as strenuously as most people

struggle to get it. I have wondered why. I have even asked him why, and he
has replied with apparent openness and candor ± and left me as puzzled as
ever. Apparently he just doesn't like it. Which doesn't quite make sense. It's
like not wanting to go to heaven, or not liking ice cream. And he has had a
taste of it. Lord!, there was a time when every village newspaper in the
country ran columns about his jittery nude upon a stairway, a picture that
stampeded people who had never been to a picture exhibition in their lives
before into going to the historic Armory Show. But if you were to ask the
editors of those journals about it now they would scarcely know what you
were talking about. And that, to be sure, may be the explanation of
Marcel's peculiar behavior. Fame comes and goes, and what's the use of
bothering about a thing so ephemeral? But here we go again, making the
reluctant Marcel famous once more.30

But neither the Nude Descending a Staircase nor the Armory Show had been
forgotten, certainly not by the editors of Life, whose magazine ran colour
photographs of the 1913 exhibition's most talked-about (if not ridiculed) works as
well as reprinting newspaper accounts.31 And Duchamp's reluctance did not
dissuade those who elevated the artist to `an almost oracular position' in the 1950s
in other ways.32 Besides Neo-Dada's homage to Duchamp and other old-time
Dadaists, there was Duchamp's own curatorial homage to Surrealism, Surrealist
Intrusion in the Enchanters' Domain, which opened with something of a scandal
on 28 November 1960 at New York's D'Arcy Galleries.33
The ever-energetic septuagenarian Duchamp was seemingly on view and
talked about everywhere, and his reputation as `the perfect highbrow' gaining
more momentum in the pulp press as well as art circles.34 In addition to Robert
Lebel's monograph on the artist published in 1959 in both French and English
editions, was Richard Hamilton's and George Heard Hamilton's typographic
version and English translation of Duchamp's Green Box in November 1960.35 To
cap it off, his election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1960
promoted Duchamp as an artist of `international prestige', who had, in the words
of the Institute's secretary, `for several decades, both for the fertility of his work,
and his motive influence in modern painting, been a legendary figure in the world
of art'.36 Fame was not ephemeral. Celebrity he was, whether or not
overshadowed by the Nude.
It was that very issue ± fame ± that Wallace pursued. Prior to Wallace
interviewing Duchamp on 12 December 1960, his staff reporter researched printed
sources and conducted an interview with the artist that served as the foundation
for a script (or script log), which included questions, possible answers, and
background information for Wallace to follow. According to the script log, the
conversation between Duchamp and Wallace was to focus on the `crook and
swindle business' in art ± of which fame was an integral element and about which
Duchamp had commented upon in the popular press37 ± along with castigating

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remarks about specific artists and critics who, for one reason or another, had
achieved celebrity status. Duchamp's refusal to respond to a series of questions
about his own fame with the staff reporter also provided coals for Wallace's
grilling. The staffer noted that Duchamp was `kind of funny about this [issue].
Very polite man, but really thinks it is none of my damn business.'38 It was
Wallace's business. Duchamp would answer Wallace ± seemingly as elliptically,
but nevertheless directly honestly, as he had McBride.
Duchamp, however, would repeat little to Wallace that he said during the staff
interview. Wallace was therefore taken unawares by Duchamp's remarks made in
the beginning of their dialogue about the artist's experiments with optics and the
readymades (Wallace was either unprepared or uninterested to quiz Duchamp
about these works that were often derided). Similarly left unexplored were
Duchamp's comments about his theoretical interests that abruptly conclude the
interview, leaving both men ± and perhaps viewers ± to ponder what `another
whole program' would have garnered.39 Nonetheless, throughout the interview,
and most noticeably at its conclusion, Wallace seemed intrigued by Duchamp,
both for his unwillingness to pursue and market his celebrity status by monetary
gain as well as for his willingness to be introspective about himself and his
interests. Duchamp's droll reflectivity, along with Wallace's gentle abrasiveness,
did indeed `generate some light rather than heat.'
By and large, Duchamp fared well on the hot seat. In fact, he seemed to enjoy
himself ± laughing on occasion and egging on his interrogator with unexpected
comments, done mostly tongue-in-cheek. Duchamp appeared to have had a
television personality akin to the easy-going posture of Kennedy, which did not
disarm the television veteran Wallace as it did the ill-rehearsed Nixon40 ± then, of
course, the stakes were different.

Note on Script Log and Taped Interview

Both the script log and the interview audio tape are on deposit in the Mike Wallace
Papers, Department of Special Collections, Syracuse University Library. The script
log is in a folder labelled `Duchamp, Marcel', on which is written `writer:
Parmentel' and `Tape 12/12/60'. (The tape date refers to Wallace's interview; when
the staff interview with Duchamp occurred is not noted in the script log or in other
documents on file in the Wallace Papers at Syracuse.) In the same folder are a CBS-TV
`format log' that details time segments (and which mentions that the interview was
`recorded on VT'), and two newspaper clippings: Bess Furman, `Art Changes Due
For White House', New York Times, 11 December 1960 (Jacqueline Kennedy's
plans to make the White House `a show-case of current culture and past history');
and `Museum Pickets Say Its Art Is Infantile', World-Telegram and Sun, 25 April
1960 (a group of forty `sign-waving artists' protesting New York's Museum of
Modern Art exclusion of `representational art').41 Apparently, neither of the
newspaper clippings' subjects were addressed either by the staff reporter or Wallace
in their interviews with Duchamp.
The typewritten script log has been edited minimally. Corrections have been
made only to those words that are ungrammatical due to typographical errors.

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Any handwritten additions and deletions to the typed script are noted in brackets.
The transcribed audio tape of the interview has been edited to a greater extent,
primarily because Duchamp was speaking in English, not in his native language.
Rather than have an exact transcript, interruptions in conversation, repetitions of
words or phrases and lack of syntax have been altered for grammatical clarity and
conversational flow. Ellipses indicate the non-completion of a sentence (noted
only in those instances when important to the dialogue for meaning). Words in
italics indicate either those that are audibly emphasized or that are not in English
(such as bon mot). Any discernible laughter is also noted.

Script Log

1A42 The few Duchamps for sale must command fantastic prices. Mr Duchamp,
1 thirty-seven years ago, in 1923, you were one of the world's best known
painters. You were an organizer of the Dadaist and Surrealist movements, a
pioneer in modern art, a legendary figure in the art world.43 Then suddenly
you quit painting. Why?
It became too commercial for him, and he ain't kidding. He does not attach
any blame to the painters today, all of them, be believes, participating in
the commercialization of art. He just wants no part of it. He could have
made millions of dollars painting. He lives on a small fixed income. His
wife was formerly married to Pierre Matisse, and is considerably younger.44
2 What's wrong with commercial. Is there something immoral about making
money.
They're singing songs of love, but not for me. Not his cup of tea. Okay for
others.
3 What do you live on? ± answer Fifth Ave Street [sic] [handwritten addition
deleted]
4 Well, here you are, saying that you attach no personal blame to these
painters and artists who have gone commercial. Yet you agree with the
sculptor Constantine [sic] Brancusi when he said `art is a swindle.'45 You,
yourself, have been quoted as saying that art is a Wall Street affair and that
anybody who makes money out of painting is a `crook.'46 Do you still
believe this?
He is quite funny about these quotes. He maintains that both he and
Brancusi deliberately overstate their cases. He thinks none the less of
painters who make money. By and large he doesn't like painters. Go after
him here about the crook and swindle business.
5 Well, was art always a swindle?
Not until the money element entered, in the Twentieth Century.
6 Well, didn't you, Marcel Duchamp, participate in this swindle for a while,
anyway?
Did you make much money from it?47 [handwritten addition]
Apparently didn't make much money as a painter. Sold Nude Descending a
Staircase for about $240.48 Would probably go for over $50,000 today.49
Got out as soon as he made up his mind that it was a shabby commercial

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affair. Refuses to make money from paintings. Hasn't done much except
play chess since.
7 Well, you also told my reporter that you agreed with Mrs Gladys
Robinson, the American painter and collector, that `art is a racket.'50
[handwritten deletion]
Who has made a racket out of art.
Who are the racketeers, the swindlers? [handwritten addition]
He regards this as a matter of historical necessity, a reflection of the values
of the age. Says that some of his young friends today want to be artists,
rather than doctors or lawyers, because art is more lucrative. If pressed he
will name the dealers, collectors and critics, but does not regard them as
villains. He is rather amused by the whole thing.
8 Well, Salvador Dali, who I believe is a friend of yours,51 makes a lot of
money.
Is he a crook, a swindler, a racketeer. [handwritten deletion]
Is he an artistic racketeer. [partial handwritten addition]
Dali is too crazy to be a crook. [handwritten addition]
Oh, no, just a smart businessman. Very funny about Dali.
9 Is he a phoney?
No, Dali, like most painters, is too stupid to be phoney. He has a low
opinion of painters.
10 What about Picasso?52 A racketeer?
No, it is not his fault that people have picked him up. He is like a blue chip
stock. He may talk about Gertrude Stein53 here, whom he regards as
responsible for a lot of the commercialism of art.
Who are the painters today whom you do admire? [handwritten addition]
?11 Bernard Buffet had a great vogue, acquired a chateau and a pair of Rolls-
Royces.54 Is he a racketeer. [handwritten deletion]
Will say that public demanded that Buffet behave like this. Doesn't like to
damn people, thinks Buffet period a great joke. Will probably say, if
pressed, that Buffet is not a very good painter.
12 What about some of our Americans. Grandma Moses, for instance.55
Regards her as pretty good primitive, compares her to Rousseau.56
13 Well, how about somebody from the Modernist School, Robert
Motherwell, for example.57 [handwritten deletion]
? Thinks Motherwell a good painter, and an intelligent man, very rare
among painters. Thinks painters stupid, childish, prima donnas and will
say so. Prefers company of chess players who do not talk. [handwritten
deletion]
14 Is Marcel Duchamp a great painter? [handwritten deletion]
Very funny about himself, doesn't think he's such great shakes, but gets a
kick out of his own stuff including Nude. He regards any success he has had
± a good painting, a good wife ± as strokes of luck. He views all of life as
luck, good or bad. No freedom of the will.
?15 What about the critics? Any of them any good.
No, they should not exist. Does not resent them, is personally friendly with
Robert Coates,58 whom he regards as a dope. Has more pity than

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admiration for someone like John Canaday59 who has to make his dreary
round of the museums and galleries every week like a traveling salesman.
Try and get him to take a poke at Canaday, whom he rather likes but does
not think is very bright. They're all trying to make a buck. Middlemen,
jobbers, part of the racket. Good humored about them.
16 Is the Guggenheim Museum part of the racket, too?
Yes, although he rather likes the building and admires Wright.60 Thinks it's
a waste of space as an art museum.
17 Well, okay, you wanted out of the racket. But why should you, Marcel
Duchamp, regarded by some people ± if not by Marcel Duchamp ± as a
great painter, deny posterity your genius or talent? Why didn't you just
keep painting and stick them in a closet, refuse to sell them?
Kind of funny about this. Very polite man, but really thinks it is none of my
damn business.
18 So you live in a house by the side of the road and let the rest of the world go
by. You play chess. Any regrets?
Marcel Duchamp has no regrets. A very serene fellow.
But you still haven't fully explained why you quit painting. If you really
were a serious painter, you could easily go on with your work and ignore
the commercialism. But [handwritten addition] could it be that you were
one of these jesters and leg-pullers, had [handwritten addition] no
conviction, and you just lost interest?
Ans: ??
Are you trying to say, Mr Duchamp, that you're really a great painter, that
you could enrich the world with your genius, but that you'd rather sit
around, as you do, and spend your years playing chess?
Ans ??
Your most famous painting, Nude Descending a Staircase, revolutionized
modern art. It could probably sell for at least $50,000. Do you share the art
world's reverence and awe for that painting?
Ans: ? (there's a famous story about a wag who gazed at the painting for
five minutes, then asked a guard, `Where's the staircase?')
Marcel Duchamp editorial. Marcel Duchamp is a paradox. A former rebel
and revolutionary, he now slips comfortably into the role of serene
philosopher. He claims to prefer the company of chess players, because
they do not talk. But he is himself a brilliant conversationalist. Fame was
thrust upon him at an early age. He was quick to renounce it.
For giving us his own `post-impressions' of art, and for adding his own self-
portrait to our gallery, we thank Marcel Duchamp, one of the people other
people are interested in.
Mike Wallace . . . that's it for now.

Taped Interview (12 December 1960; televised 18 January 1961)

Wallace: This is Mike Wallace with another television portrait in our gallery
of colorful people.

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Modern art has been discussed, debated, attacked, praised and

damned like few other phenomena of our time. Is it hokery, fakery
or the real thing?61 Our guest, Marcel Duchamp, is one of the great
figures of modern art. He was founder of the Dadaist and Surrealist
movements and his famous, or infamous, Nude Descending a
Staircase, is one of the best-known paintings in the world. But
suddenly, thirty-seven years ago, Marcel Duchamp stopped painting.
We'll ask him why he stopped painting and what he thinks about
modern art in just one minute.62

[Commercial Break]

Wallace: And now to our story with Marcel Duchamp, a gentleman who
stubbornly refuses to go onward and upward with the arts.63
Monsieur Duchamp, thirty-seven years ago, back in 1923, you
were one of the world's best-known painters. You were an
organizer of the Dadaist and Surrealist movements, a pioneer in
modern art, world famous for your Nude Descending a Staircase, a
legendary figure in the art world, and then suddenly, you quit
painting! Why?
Duchamp: In the first place, I didn't quit painting in the exact form of speech. I
was working on an enormous glass; in fact, I had been working [on
it] eight years already in '23.64 And I was leaving America for
Europe, at least for a while, before I'd come back. So, I didn't stop
painting that day, meaning going to Europe.
Wallace: I know, but 1923 really was the last, active year.
Duchamp: I understand. That is true. After that I didn't touch a brush so to
[speak], nor a tube of paint anymore.
Wallace: Why?
Duchamp: This is a curious form, because other activities took up my mind, for
example, optical experiments with the spirals and producing the
three-dimensional effects, etc.,65 which were more . . . I mean, you
know how an artist changes his taste! Also readymade. The
readymades were very much on my mind then.
Wallace: When you say the readymades, these were?
Duchamp: Yes, ready made, all made. But you see, even if it doesn't take a long
time to choose a snow shovel from the hardware shop, even so, you
have to think and put a word on it, and it's half poetry and half
plastic.66
Wallace: But to all intents and purposes, you certainly left painting and never
touched a brush. And I've heard it said that you quit because you
believed that the art world was too commercial.
Duchamp: That reason also comes in, absolutely. I felt that at that time, already
then in 1923, there [were] a number of painters, of collectors, of
dealers, in such a number that never was before the First World War.
No, all there was before the war, around 1905, were very few
collectors, very few dealers, very few painters, and they spoke an

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esoteric language that the layman would not understand. Today this
is the opposite! Everybody speaks about painting, everybody buys
painting if they can afford it, and it's a Wall Street affair, if you want
to call it that way.
Wallace: Painting is a Wall Street affair.
Duchamp: I call it that way because money's attached to it.
Wallace: Well, what's wrong with money? Shouldn't an artist be permitted to
make a living?
Duchamp: Nothing at all! But the difference is that the value of a painting is not
in the amount of dollars or cents that are attached to it. In other
words, a painting that was worth $50,000 in 1900 is worth $5,000
today, or less, or nothing. So, the value is absolutely artificial and of
the moment, [and is] not really the actual value. Like a piece of metal
is worth so much [today, which is not] the same [as] in 1815 [or in]
1950,67 according to the difference of the value of money.
Wallace: Are you saying then, that Picasso or Braque or Rouault or
whomever, they are in a sense . . . Well, you have said that there is
racketeering in modern art.
Duchamp: Yes, yes.
Wallace: And I believe that you said that anybody who makes money out of
painting is a `crook'.
Duchamp: Yes. It's a sort of a bon mot, if you want to call it that way, to make
my thought go over.
Wallace: Well, not very bon. [Laugh]
Duchamp: [Laugh] Not very bon mot, no. But `crook' is a little exaggerated. But
I mean, there is an element of racketeering in all this, admitted.
Wallace: What is that?
Duchamp: [By] racketeering I mean making money under false pretense. In
other words, the painting you buy [for] 10 cents today maybe worth
3 cents in twenty years. In other words, there is no actual final value
attached to that painting, because the aesthetic value changes in
money value. So there is racketeering when you profit [from] the
moment, when you can make money with painting by making many
paintings and much money. So that's where the racketeering idea
comes from, you see.
Wallace: Isn't it a question of simple supply and demand?
Duchamp: Yes. No. But the supply and demand is not the same as copper or
wheat, at all! At the moment if you want to say there's a man-in-
offer, okay. But that's not enough. To me, is to excuse it. I've known
young men of [today], age twenty, when they want to be an artist,
they're full of ideals, never thinking of money, [and] mixing money
with aesthetics.
Wallace: And you think that money and aesthetics cannot mix?
Duchamp: They hardly mix, to my taste.68 I mean they occasionally do, but it's
not important whether they should mix or not.
Wallace: Did you, Marcel Duchamp, ever participate in this swindle, in this
racket?

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Duchamp: No, no. Because I can tell you what I ever got for my paintings; really
funny, in prices. For example, that Nude of mine was sold for $240
in 1913.
Wallace: The Nude Descending?
Duchamp: Yes.
Wallace: The Nude Descending a Staircase was sold for how much?
Duchamp: $240; in francs 1,200 francs, at 5 francs [to] a dollar.
Wallace: This was in 1913?
Duchamp: 1913. Yes.
Wallace: And today it is worth?
Duchamp: Well, I couldn't tell because I [don't know] what [one would pay] for
it.69 I know it has been insured in a show for $40,000.
Wallace: And this is hanging now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the
Arensberg Collection.70
In just a moment sir, I would like to come back and find out, first of
all, if you've ever been sorry that you painted Nude Descending a
Staircase.
Duchamp: No, never been sorry.
Wallace: But did you never feel that the painting got ahead of Marcel
Duchamp? That the painting was more important than the man who
painted it?
Duchamp: Yes, that I've been very much aware of, to the point of suffering
almost from it. To think that that woman, the nude ± she's a
woman71 ± descending the staircase, was always ahead of me. And
when they spoke of it, never, never named me as being the painter.
Of course, it has no importance, but at the end of twenty-five years
of this treatment you begin to feel it and you want to get in front of it
instead of behind.72
Wallace: All right. Now, we're going to take a commercial break and when we
come back after that, I would like to ask you this: Why, why do you
have to sell your paintings? Why could you not have just gone on
painting and not participated in this Wall Street swindle, if you want
to call it that. Paint them, and then put them in the closet, and forget
about them. And we'll hear Marcel Duchamp's answer in just a
minute.

[Commercial Break]

Wallace: Now back to our story with painter, chess player, Marcel Duchamp.
Monsieur Duchamp, what about it? If money disturbed you that
much, if the whole swindle and crookedness of the art world
offended you so, why could you not simply keep on painting and
then not have shows, just paint for yourself?
Duchamp: It could have been done, but it didn't appeal to me because no matter
what you are, if you live in your epoch, you can not avoid it; and the
epoch was full of this feeling of painting and selling paintings. You
couldn't do it very well, and I don't know of anyone who has done

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ON THE HOT SEAT: MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEWS MARCEL DUCHAMP

it, in fact. I had other activities, like, as I said, those experiments

with three-dimension[s] and sculpture. I can't explain very well all
this. A life is a life, and it's all very well to say `what did you do in
1932 at 10 o'clock in the morning?' It's too easy to say, and not easy
to answer. It's a bit like that, and self-analysis is not my strong point
either. [Laugh]
Wallace: I have here an advertisement from yesterday's New York Times:
`Exhibition and Sale. Thirty-One Small Paintings by Rouault'.73
Now here is a self-portrait by Monsieur Rouault. $3,000. Three-and-
a-half inches by two-and-a-half inches. About this big. Does this
offend you?
Duchamp: It does offend me a little. But the story is as an explanation ± which
is no explanation ± that those paintings were made to illustrate a
book, and as [such] would be reproduced in the book as
illustration[s]. The book was never made by Ambroise Vollard,74
so the paintings have been sold, or are being sold now, as originals.
Wallace: Would you pay?
Duchamp: No, never. Not [ever] would [I] pay that money.75 I think it's stupid.
Wallace: Do you have a large collection of your own?
Duchamp: None, whatsoever.76
Wallace: No paintings at all?
Duchamp: No paintings at all.
Wallace: Why?
Duchamp: I don't care for [it]. I'm not a collector. You see, an artist is not a
[collector], as you know, generally, is not a collector. Some are in fact.
But I'm not. I think an artist doesn't need to be a collector. To be an
artist is to do things. I'm not talking about myself anymore. [Laugh]
[As an artist] you don't collect.77 Collecting is sort of despicable.
Wallace: To collect things is despicable. For you?
Duchamp: For an artist. Know what I mean? As you make them, don't collect
them, for heaven's sake.
Wallace: To be surrounded by things of beauty is despicable?
Duchamp: Yes. But no. But you make them! If you are the artist, you
make them, and there's plenty. See what I mean; it's not ex-
actly what I mean. Collecting is one thing and being an artist
is another.78
Wallace: Among critics, today's critics, who is the man, or woman, whom you
most respect?
Duchamp: The man I do respect, and hardly writes anymore because he's 91
years of age, if I not mistaken, [is] Henry McBride.79 [He] was the
great person in 1913, '14, '15, who wrote as a great art critic in the
Sun and different papers at the time and since [then] too, and has a
marvelous style, I mean personal style, in the sense of literary style.
It's not commercial sounding or anything. It's perfect. It is a piece of
literature, really.
Wallace: A man, a considerable younger than [a] 91 [year-old] man, like John
Canaday.

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 ON THE HOT SEAT: MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEWS MARCEL DUCHAMP

Duchamp: Canaday is a good man too. I met him the other day for the first
time, and we had a rather long conversation.80 I also read his [art
column in the New York Times]. I consider him as a good [writer]. I
consider writing important in art criticism. It is not a question of
talking about so much about this painter and why and so forth. It's
to analyze with a literary sense, because it's in writing and it has to
be literary, and I think Mr Canaday is a marvelous writer. So is Miss
[Emily] Genauer.81
Wallace: Mr Canaday was less than enthusiastic about the Guggenheim
Museum here on Fifth Avenue.82 Do you agree with him?
Duchamp: No. I like the Guggenheim Museum as an architectural construction.
But at the same time, I know there are difficulties, practical
difficulties, in running it as a museum.
Wallace: You left your painting, we are told, at least partially, to play chess,
and some people have said that that proves that Marcel Duchamp, in
a sense, intellectualized himself out of painting.83 Do you go along
with that?
Duchamp: No. I don't at all. Because, you see, the word `intellectualized' is too
strong. I mean, it's too easy to take a word like that which
completely changes the meaning of an activity. When `to
intellectualize' means what? I never wrote [or] I never write artistic
theories or aesthetics, although I would like to, because it's
interesting. But I, in fact, have a doubt about the word as a means
of communication. I don't like words! Imagine.
Wallace: You don't like words.
Duchamp: No!
Wallace: You don't like painting. You don't like words.
Duchamp: I'm a man who doesn't like much. [Laugh] In fact, I'm for
indifference. That's if you want to define me.
Wallace: Truly? You are for indifference.
Duchamp: It means very little, but at least it's a good word in my life.
Wallace: Why are you for indifference?
Duchamp: Because I hate hatred, I hate too much love of your mother. All this
is no good. I mean the world is not made of these things. Indifference
is the real state of response [sic].84 Zen,85 people like [the] Asiatics;
I've probably been tempted by those theories.
Wallace: Well, Monsieur Duchamp, right here at the end I see that we have almost
another whole [program], certainly another whole program. I wish we
had the time. I thank you for taking this time to come and talk.
Duchamp: Thank you.
Wallace: Be back in a moment with a footnote to this interview with painter,
Marcel Duchamp.

[Commercial Break]

Wallace: Marcel Duchamp is a paradox. Formerly a rebel, a revolutionary,

now he slips comfortably into the role of serene philosopher. His

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ON THE HOT SEAT: MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEWS MARCEL DUCHAMP

philosophy? Indifference. He claims to prefer the company of chess

players because they do not talk. Fame was thrust upon him at an
early age and he was quick to renounce it.
For giving us his post-impressions [Duchamp laughs] of art and for
adding his own self-portrait to our gallery, we thank Marcel
Duchamp, one of the people other people are interested in.
Mike Wallace.
That's it for now.

Naomi Sawelson-Gorse
Claremont, California

Notes
1 I am grateful to Jacqueline Matisse Monnier,
Mike Wallace, and the Department of Special
Collections in the Syracuse University Library for
granting publication permission; Carolyn A.
Davis for continual assistance with the Wallace
materials at Syracuse; Anne Frantilla of the
Bentley Historical Library at the University of
Michigan and Linda Ashton of the Harry
Ransom Humanities Research Library at the
University of Texas at Austin for providing
information about Wallace materials on deposit
in their institutions; Moira Roth for sharing
notes of her visit with Salvador DalõÂ in 1973;
Anne d'Harnoncourt for useful suggestions; and
G.L.G. and M. for watchful eyes.
2 `No Velvet Glove', Newsweek, vol. 48, no. 25
(17 December 1956), p. 73; `Hot Property', Time,
vol. 69, no. 1 (7 January 1957), p. 66. Another
television and radio critic thought Nightbeat
added a desperately needed `liberty of subject
and freedom of expression' in an advertising-
based content medium. See Robert Lewis Shayon,
`Watch Wallace!', Saturday Review, vol. 40, no. 4
(26 January 1957), p. 24.
3 `Turnabout on Mike Wallace', Newsweek, vol.
50, no. 12 (16 September 1957), p. 67; `Hot
Property', p. 66.
4 `Hot Property', p. 66. Nightbeat aired from 11
pm to midnight four nights a week, with two
guests each interviewed for twenty-five minutes.
5 `Turnabout on Mike Wallace', p. 67. Wallace
denied any `sadistic streak' in himself; rather it
was `the audience [exercising] their own latent
sadism vicariously through me' that accounted
for the success of his interview programme. His
switch to WABC saw his salary increase to about
$150,000. ibid., pp. 67, 72.
6 `Mike Wallace: Man on a hot spot', Look,
vol. 21, no. 15 (23 July 1957), p. 66. On the
affiliation switch and WABC debut, see `Mike
Wallace's Debut', Newsweek, vol. 49, no. 19 (13
May 1957), pp. 104, 107 (which includes excerpts
from national newspapers about Wallace's first
WABC-TV interview with `cagey film queen
Gloria Swanson'); `To Mike Wallace's Taste',
Newsweek, vol. 50, no. 11 (9 September 1957),
p. 68; and John Lardner, `The Total Interview',
and `The Third-Degree Boys Revisited', New
Yorker, vol. 33, no. 37 (9 November 1957),
pp. 164, 165±8, and vol. 34, no. 18 (21 June
1958), pp. 70±3.
7 For a sampling of these and other questions
posed by Wallace, and the replies by his guests,
see `No Velvet Glove'; `Hot Property', pp. 66±7;
and `Celebrities' Hot Seat: Blunt Queries Make
``Nightbeat'' Exciting', Life, vol. 42, no. 4 (28
January 1957), pp. 50, 52, 54, 57.
8 `No Velvet Glove'; `Turnabout on Mike
Wallace', p. 67.
9 `Mike Wallace: Man on a hot spot', p. 67.
10 The term quickly became associated with
Wallace. See, for example, `Celebrities' Hot Seat:
Blunt Queries Make ``Nightbeat'' Exciting'; `Mike
Wallace: Man on a hot spot', and Shayon,
`Watch Wallace!'
11 `Turnabout on Mike Wallace', p. 68.
12 `The ``Whip-Snapper'' Sums It Up', Newsweek,
vol. 49, no. 19 (13 May 1957), p. 104.
13 ibid.
14 `Mike Wallace: Man on a hot spot', p. 69.
15 Wallace began a `new association with the
station' in March 1959, with two daily weekday
shows (airing Monday through Friday), which
included a news programme that ran from 7:30
to 8 pm, and an interview programme later that
evening at 10:30 pm. This twice-a-weekday
format was later changed to incorporate, in one
programme time slot (at 8 pm), both the news
and the interview segments. See Jack Gould, `TV:
New Wallace Beats', New York Times, 10 March
1959, p. 71. For a more critical commentary on
Wallace's new programme, see John Lardner, `13
at Night', New Yorker, vol. 35, no. 12 (9 May
1959), pp. 134±8.

48 ß Association of Art Historians 2000

 ON THE HOT SEAT: MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEWS MARCEL DUCHAMP
16 The dates these interviews were aired are noted
in local newspaper television schedules, such as
the New York Times. For the date of the
Duchamp interview taping, see below, Note on
Script Log and Taped Interview. Whether the
aired tape was edited is unknown.
17 Shayon, `Watch Wallace!' who also gives the
programme's title as Conversations with Elder
Statesmen. Robert D. Graff produced and
directed the thirty-minute film of Duchamp's
interview with James Johnson Sweeney
(conducted in July 1955), A Conversation with
Marcel Duchamp, that WNBC aired on 15
January 1956. See Jennifer Gough-Cooper and
Jacques Caumont, `Ephemerides on and about
Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Selavy, 1887±1968',
in Marcel Duchamp: Work and Life, ed. Pontus
Hulten (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), entries
under 3 August 1955 and 15 January 1956.
18 The statistics are mentioned in Theodore H.
White, The Making of the President 1960 (New
York: Atheneum, 1961), p. 279.
19 James Thrall Soby, `Art on TV', Saturday
Review, vol. 40, no. 15 (13 April 1957), p. 29.
Price's and Robinson's appearance on The
$64,000 Challenge lasted from 30 September to
28 October 1956, according to Edward G.
Robinson, All My Yesterdays, An Autobiography
(New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973), p. 326.
20 `How They Rated', Newsweek, vol. 50, no. 12
(16 September 1957), p. 67. Along with the
interview of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867±1959),
there were others by Wallace that received high
viewer ratings, such as those of `Mobster Mickey
Cohen . . . and private-eye Fred Otash . . . Steve
Allen, TV star himself; Diana Barrymore, author
of ``Too Much, Too Soon.''' Wright was
interviewed also for Conversations with Elder
Statesmen, as were other artists, including
Jacques Lipchitz, and the photographer Edward
Steichen.
21 Soby, `Art on TV', pp. 29±30. On Barnes (1872±
1951) and his reputation, see, for instance,
William Shack, Art and Argyrol: The Life and
Career of Dr Albert C. Barnes (New York and
London: Thomas Yoseloff, 1960); and Howard
Greenfield, The Devil and Dr Barnes: Portrait of
an American Art Collector (New York: Viking,
1987). Soby (1906±1979), who earlier contributed
an article to the Marcel Duchamp issue of View
(`Marcel Duchamp in the Arensberg Collection',
View, series 5, no. 1 [March 1945], pp. 11±12),
was then chair of the Department of Painting at
New York's Museum of Modern Art (1946±68)
and wrote art criticism for Saturday Review
(1946±57).
22 Shayon, `Watch Wallace!' An edited transcript of
Sweeney's interview with Duchamp appeared in
Wisdom: Conversations with the Elder Wise Men
of Our Day, ed. James Nelson (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1958), pp. 89±99. Nelson originally
hesitated to include the transcript because
ß Association of Art Historians 2000
Duchamp `talked directly at and about his
paintings as he stood in front of them' at the
museum. `At first, this seemed like television ±
mostly pictures, and not for a book. But his
conversation was too stimulating and droll, and
his convictions too honest, to omit.' ibid., p. 89.
23 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., `The New Mood in
Politics', Esquire (January 1960), reprinted in The
Sixties: The Art, Attitudes, Politics, and Media of
Our Most Explosive Decade, ed. Gerald Howard
(New York: Marlowe & Company, 1995), p. 44.
24 Arthur Krock, `TV and the Campaign, 15
October 1960', in his In The Nation: 1932±1996
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p. 311.
25 Philip Deane, `The Sheriff and the Lawyer',
Toronto Globe and Mail, 15 October 1960,
quoted in Marshall McLuhan, `Television: The
Timid Giant', from his Understanding Media:
The Extensions of Man (1964), reprinted in The
Sixties, pp. 405±406.
26 White, The Making of a President 1960,
pp. 294±5. The importance of television to the
election and the candidates' tube image have
been frequently noted, most recently by David
Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Villard
Books, 1993), pp. 728±33. For the majority of
critics, the success of Kennedy was less a result
of content than image. Indeed, the youthful,
handsome Kennedy donned appropriate costume
and make-up for the television cameras (e.g., a
light blue shirt that did not pick up the glare of
the television lights). In contrast, Nixon had a
five-o'clock shadow, pasty make-up that often
would run from beads of perspiration, and wore
a white shirt ± all of which made him look more
sinister. For those listening on radio, reportedly
most agreed that Nixon seemed to have won the
debates.
27 See below, Script Log.
28 The interview, taped in New York on 19 January
1959, aired on BBC Radio 13 November 1959
and again on 12 August 1960. For the transcript,
see `Mr Duchamp, if you'd only known Jeff
Koons was coming', The Art Newspaper, no. 15
(February 1991), p. 13. For a derogatory
assessment, see Andrew Forge, `The Silence of
Marcel Duchamp', The Listener, vol. 62, no.
1597 (5 November 1959), pp. 775±6; and about
the BBC Radio series which carried the interview,
see Derrick Sington's `Art ± anti-Art', in the same
periodical (p. 764).
29 Georges Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Marcel
Duchamp (Marseille: Dimanche, 1994). I thank
Andre Gervais for his generosity in supplying me
with this text-CD publication. Charbonnier's
interview took place over several days ± on 6, 21
and 27 December 1960, and 2 January 1961; the
broadcasts were similarly aired over several days
± on 9, 16, 23 and 30 December 1960, and 6 and
13 January 1961. For excerpts, see Caumont and
Gough-Cooper, `Ephemerides', entries under
broadcast dates.
49
ON THE HOT SEAT: MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEWS MARCEL DUCHAMP
30 Henry McBride, `Duchamps du monde', Art
News, vol. 51, no. 1 (March 1952), p. 33.
31 `The Great Armory Show of 1913', Life, vol. 28,
no. 1 (2 January 1950), pp. 58±63. More recently,
in 1958, Amherst College in Massachusetts
mounted an exhibition, The 1913 Armory Show
in Retrospect, and Aline B. Saarinen's, The
Proud Possessors: The lives, times and tastes of
some adventurous American art collectors (New
York: Random House, 1958), emphasized the
impact of the Armory Show on the American
cultural scene and art market. Duchamp himself
promoted his Nude (showing No. 3) in Newark's
Bamberger's department store window display;
for a description and photograph, see Caumont
and Gough-Cooper, `Ephemerides', entry under
29 January 1960.
32 Winthrop Sargeant, `Dada's Daddy', Life, vol. 32,
no. 17 (28 April 1952), p. 108. See also Moira
Roth, `Marcel Duchamp and America, 1913±
1974', unpublished PhD dissertation, University
of California at Berkeley, 1974; Moira Roth,
`Marcel Duchamp in America: A Self Ready-
Made', Arts Magazine, vol. 51, no. 9 (May 1977),
pp. 92±6; and Amelia Jones, Postmodernism and
the En-gendering of Marcel Duchamp
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
33 This exhibition, co-curated by Duchamp and
Andre Breton, ruptured their friendship for a
number of reasons, most particularly for
Duchamp's inclusion of a work by DalõÂ . See
Caumont and Gough-Cooper, `Ephemerides',
entries under 28 November 1960, 1 and 11
December 1960; and `Chronologie 1946±1966',
in Andre Breton. La beaute convulsive (Paris:
Editions du Centre Pompidou, 1991), p. 423.
34 Sargeant, `Dada's Daddy', p. 108.
35 Lebel's monograph (design and layout by
Duchamp and Arnold Fawcus), was first
published in French under the title Sur Marcel
Duchamp by Trianon Press in a limited edition
of 137 copies in 1959. Shortly afterwards, it was
published in English translation with a much
larger printing. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her
Bachelors, Even, a typographic version by
Richard Hamilton of Marcel Duchamp's Green
Box, trans. George Heard Hamilton, was first
published in 1960 in London by Percy Lund,
Humphries & Co., and in New York by George
Wittenborn in an edition of 1000.
36 Caumont and Gough-Cooper, `Ephemerides',
entry under 25 May 1960. Duchamp was elected
to the Institute on 2 February 1960; the induction
ceremony was held in New York on 25 May
1960. A newspaper reporter remarked on the
`newly elected members of the Institute [that]
include Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning,
Rico Lebrun, and, last but never least, Marcel
Duchamp, the anarch [sic] of twentieth-century
painting, as important an anti-artist as Gertrude
Stein was an important anti-writer, both
triumphantly demonstrating that nothing
50
succeeds like failure.' See Stuart Preston,
`Institute Prizeday', New York Times, 29 May
1960, section 2, p. 9.
37 Specifically, Duchamp's remarks quoted in `The
Brothers', Time, vol. 69, no. 14 (8 April 1957),
pp. 74±7 (his comments appearing on p. 77).
38 See below, Script Log.
39 See below, Taped Interview. On occasion,
Wallace did have two-part interviews, but the
one with Duchamp was not among these.
40 Although Nixon had appeared on television
many times before the presidential debates with
Kennedy (including the infamous `Checkers'
speech), he was still uncomfortable with the
television format and was not well prompted by
his advisers about make-up, clothes, etc., for the
medium.
41 It is probable that more than these two
newspaper clippings originally comprised the file
compiled by Wallace's staff on Duchamp. Indeed,
the core of the interview's subject, `the crook and
swindle business' of art, comes directly from
Duchamp's 1957 published statements in `The
Brothers' (p. 77), made shortly before the artist
gave his talk on `The Creative Act' in the
Houston panel of the same name (coincidentally,
the exhibition Jacques Villon, Raymond
Duchamp-Villon, and Marcel Duchamp was then
on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum's temporary quarters). In order to
reconstruct what was available and of interest to
Wallace and his staff, emphasis is placed upon
US publications ± especially those in the mass,
popular press ± throughout this article and
accompanying notes.
42 All question numbers appear on the left margin
of the script log pages and are handwritten. On
occasion, question marks (`?') appear in the left
margin, sometimes next to the numbers.
43 Handwritten notation for 1A to be inserted here.
44 Duchamp, at 67, married Alexina (Teeny) Sattler
(1906±1995), then forty-eight, on 16 January
1954. She had been married previously (1929±49)
to Pierre Matisse.
45 Constantin Brancusi (1876±1957) was quoted by
Duchamp as saying `Art is a swindle', in `The
Brothers', p. 77. See also Brancusi's aphorism,
`Art is performed only in conditions of austerity
and drama, like a perfect crime', as quoted in
Friedrich Teja Bach, `Brancusi: The reality of
Sculpture', in Constantin Brancusi, 1876±1957
(Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1995),
p. 24. My thanks to Matthew S. Witkovsky for
help with Brancusi aphorisms.
46 Duchamp, as quoted in `The Brothers', p. 77.
Time's interviewer noted that Duchamp, `at
sixty-nine still spry, witty and eager to shock,
[. . .] proclaimed ``Painting today is a Wall Street
affair. When you make a business out of being a
revolutionary, what are you? A crook.''' Similar
statements by Duchamp appeared in Geoffrey
Hellman, `Marcel Duchamp', New Yorker,
ß Association of Art Historians 2000
 ON THE HOT SEAT: MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEWS MARCEL DUCHAMP
vol. 33, no. 7 (6 April 1957), p. 27 (`Painting
shouldn't become a fashionable thing. And
money, money, money comes in and it becomes a
Wall Street affair'); and `The Western Round
Table on Modern Art (1949)', ed. Douglas
MacAgy, Modern Artists in America, no. 1
(1951), p. 36 (`the commercial collectors [. . .]
have made modern art a field comparable to a
Wall Street affair'). It is worth noting that
statements from The Western Round Table were
published elsewhere, e.g., `Beauty & the Babble',
Time, vol. 53, no. 16 (18 April 1949), p. 72; and
`Modern Art Argument', Look, vol. 13, no. 23
(8 November 1949), pp. 80±3. Duchamp made
comparable comments to those cited above in the
interviews with Charbonnier and George Heard
Hamilton. To Hamilton, Duchamp said:
`Collectors take a different attitude today: they
regard art as a commodity, a thing that they put
on their walls, a conversation at table.' See `Mr
Duchamp, if you'd only known Jeff Koons was
coming.' And Duchamp remarked in 1957 during
an informal press conference in Washington, DC:
`Art is a marvellous [sic] investment for people
who would rather buy a painting than Standard
Oil.' See Caumont and Gough-Cooper,
`Ephemerides', entry under 21 December 1957.
For more historicizing remarks by Duchamp
about the relationship of the artist to the art
market and collectors, see his statements in the
symposium `Should the Artist Go to College ±
and Why?' held at Hofstra College on 13 May
1960; and those he made in an interview with
Katharine Kuh on 29 March 1961, published in
Katharine Kuh, `Marcel Duchamp', in her The
Artist's Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists (New
York and Evanston: Harper & Row, 1962), p.
89. Art as commodity was topical in the press
generally, due to the post-war boom in prices for
art works, the changing clientele of collectors
and an increase in the number of art galleries
and artists. For a sampling of the press coverage,
see `For Artists At Large', Newsweek, vol. 56,
no. 19 (7 November 1960), p. 118, which
reported that `there are some 285 galleries and
6,000 artists in New York City alone'; `Fine Arts
in the Market Place', Life, vol. 49, no. 12 (19
September 1960), pp. 12±16, with a double-page
spread (pp. 12±13) that listed dollar amounts for
artists' works according to `Gilt-Edged Exchange'
and `Speculative Exchange' and how much works
by particular artists sold for at various times, all
interspersed with Wall Street stock quotations
(Duchamp does not appear in the artist's
listings); and Katharine Kuh, `Can Modern Art
Survive Its Friends?' Saturday Review, vol. 43,
no. 11 (12 March 1960), pp. 15±17, 75, who
deplored the capriciousness of prices and
prevailing dilettantism.
47 The question was later posed by Richard
Hamilton during his interview with Duchamp on
27 September 1961. A copy of the typed
ß Association of Art Historians 2000
transcript is on deposit in the Marcel Duchamp
1963 Exhibition Papers, Norton Simon Museum.
48 Duchamp offered an explanation about the
differences in the selling price and what he
received for the painting: `Mr Torrey [. . .] paid
about three hundred dollars for it. I got two
hundred and forty after the dealer's commission.
[Walter] Arensberg never told me what he paid
for it. I wish I knew. I was curious but I was
discreet. Do you suppose it was more than three
hundred dollars?' See Hellman, `Marcel
Duchamp', p. 26. The $240 amount also appears
in ```Art Was a Dream . . .''', Newsweek, vol. 54,
no. 19 (8 November 1959), p. 118. The amount
paid by Frederic C. Torrey, a San Francisco
dealer in the firm of Vickery Atkins & Torrey,
was $324. Arensberg bought the painting from
Torrey for $1,000. See Francis M. Naumann,
`Frederic C. Torrey and Duchamp's Nude
Descending a Staircase,' in West Coast Duchamp,
ed. Bonnie Clearwater (Miami Beach: Grassfield
Press, 1991), pp. 10±23; Francis Herbert Hoover,
`Frederic C. Torrey and the Infamous Nude',
Southwest Art, vol. 3, no. 9 (April 1974),
pp. 57±9; and Elmer MacRae Papers, Archives of
American Art (Smithsonian Institution),
microfilm roll 3131, frames 1021 and 1023. On
Arensberg's ownership, see also below, note 70.
49 The $50,000 price was mentioned by A.L.
Chanin, `Then and Now', New York Times
Magazine (22 January 1956), p. 22, at the time
of the Sidney Janis Gallery's show, Cubism,
1910±22.
50 Gladys Lloyd Cassell Robinson (died 1971),
actor, amateur painter and art collector, was
interviewed previously by Wallace (2 June 1958),
and was formerly married to Edward G.
Robinson. Their divorce in 1956 resulted in the
sale of their art collection. On the sale of their
collection, and comments made by each of the
Robinsons about it, see `The Robinson Pictures',
Newsweek, vol. 49, no. 3 (21 January 1957), p.
21; `The Highest Bidder', Newsweek, vol. 49, no.
5 (4 February 1957), p. 85; `Death of a
Collection', Time, vol. 69, no. 9 (4 March 1957),
p. 77; and `The Big Deal', Time, vol. 69, no. 10
(11 March 1957), p. 85. The phrase `art is a
racket' was ubiquitous, as was terming artists
and those involved in the art market `crooks'.
For example, the artist John Graham remarked:
`Art is now a racket [. . .] Picasso is the world's
best caricaturist, the best of the international art
crooks.' See `The Elegant Eccentric', Newsweek,
vol. 56, no. 17 (24 October 1960), p. 124.
51 DalõÂ (1904±1989), who was interviewed earlier by
Wallace (7 December 1956, 21 April 1958 and 30
January 1959), had written a celebratory essay on
Duchamp that appeared in English as `The king
and the queen traversed by swift nudes', trans.
Richard Howard, Art News, vol. 58, no. 2 (April
1959), pp. 22±5. Duchamp's friendship with DalõÂ
was unfathomable to some; for a personal
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ON THE HOT SEAT: MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEWS MARCEL DUCHAMP
anecdote by the American composer, John Cage
(1912±1992), see Conversing with Cage, ed.
Richard Kostelanetz (New York: Limelight,
1988), p. 183. See also Duchamp's remarks about
DalõÂ during the 1957 informal press conference,
quoted in Caumont and Gough-Cooper,
`Ephemerides', entry under 21 December 1957.
52 Pablo Picasso (1881±1973), widely regarded as
the most recognized and recognizable modern
artist, recently had a retrospective at the Tate
Gallery (summer 1960) and in 1957, the Museum
of Modern Art in New York mounted Picasso:
75th Anniversary Exhibition. For the `racketeer'
association with Picasso, see note 50 above.
53 For Duchamp's earlier statements on the
American writer and art collector Gertrude Stein
(1874±1946), which were recorded by Walter
Arensberg, see the article by Molly Nesbit and
Naomi Sawelson-Gorse, `Concept of Nothing:
New Notes by Marcel Duchamp and Walter
Conrad Arensberg', in The Duchamp Effect, eds
Martha Buskirk and Mignon Dixon (Cambridge
and London: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 156±8.
54 Bernard Buffet (born 1928) was frequently in the
mass media during the mid-1950s, with feature
stories appearing in The New Yorker, Time,
Vogue, Life, Newsweek among other magazines
and newspapers, of all which highlighted his
financial success. See, for instance, `Stark
Success', Life, vol. 38, no. 12 (21 March 1955),
pp. 77±8, 80; `An Artist Must Eat', Time, 67,
no. 9 (27 February 1956), p. 82; and `Artist in
a Rolls-Royce', Newsweek, vol. 47, no. 12 (19
March 1956), pp. 114, 116±17.
55 The self-taught, aged artist, Anna Mary Moses
(nee Robertson), known as Grandma Moses
(1860±1961), was generally considered an icon in
the US, and had recently celebrated her
hundredth birthday. The festivities were featured
in newspapers and magazines. See, for example,
`100 Candles for a Gay Lady', Life, vol. 49, no.
12 (19 September 1960), cover and pp. 104±112.
56 The self-taught, naõÈ ve, French painter, Henri
Rousseau, Le Douanier (1844±1910), began
painting after his retirement (1885) from his post
in the octroi department of Customs and Excise.
57 Robert Motherwell (1915±1991), who was
educated at Stanford, Harvard and Columbia
universities, began his association with French
Surrealist expatriate artists living in New York
shortly after moving there in 1940. He was
involved in VVV and possibilities, was editor of
Wittenborn & Schultz' influential series,
Documents of Modern Art, and edited the
anthology The Dada Painters and Poets (1951),
which included Duchamp's works and texts by
and about him. Motherwell also edited the short-
lived journal Modern Artists in America (1951),
which published excerpts from The Western
Round Table on Modern Art and photographs of
the Arensbergs' collection in their Hollywood
home. On Motherwell's career and writings, see
52
The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell,
ed. Stephanie Terenzio (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992).
58 Robert Myron Coates (1897±1973), then art critic
for the New Yorker, considered Duchamp
`eccentric' for ceasing painting. See Coates,
`Eilshemius and Duchamp', New Yorker, vol. 35,
no. 8 (18 April 1959), pp. 141±3. For a slightly
different attitude toward Duchamp by the critic,
see Coates, `Three Brothers', New Yorker, vol.
33, no. 2 (2 March 1957), pp. 97±98. About
Coates, see his autobiography, The View From
Here (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960), and
the book's review by Charles Poore in the New
York Times, 20 October 1960, p. 33.
59 John Canaday (1907±1985), who began writing
art criticism for the New York Times in
September 1959 and served as its art editor and
chief art critic, quickly became the beÃte noire of
supporters of the Abstract Expressionists and
other modernists. The much-publicized forced
departure in October 1960 from the New York
Times of its other art critic, Dore Ashton, which
was caused by Canaday, led to a protest against
Canaday by, among others, Thomas B. Hess,
then executive editor of Art News. See Thomas
B. Hess, `Editorial: The many deaths of
American art', Art News, vol. 59, no. 6 (October
1960), p. 25; `The Beleaguered Critic',
Newsweek, vol. 56, no. 18 (31 October 1960),
pp. 82±3; and Nicolas Calas, `Editor's letters',
Art News, vol. 59, no. 7 (November 1960), p. 6.
See also the letters from Clement Greenberg to
Canaday, 16±19 May 1960, John Canaday
Papers, Archives of American Art (Smithsonian
Institution), microfilm roll NYJC 1, frames 688±
691. The hostility toward Canaday would
continue unabated for several years. For a
sampling of letters, pro and con, that the New
York Times printed in February and March
1961, see `Appendix: The Embattled Critic', in
John Canaday, Embattled Critic: Views on
Modern Art (New York: Noonday Press, 1962),
pp. 219±38. The same year of the New York
Times letter writing imbroglio, Wallace would
interview Canaday. For Canaday's viewpoint of
Wallace, see the draft of a letter from Canaday
to Philip Pollack, [after 20 October 1961],
Canaday Papers, Archives of American Art,
microfilm roll NYJC 6, frame 271.
60 Wright had butted heads and ideologies with
Duchamp during a symposium years before,
when the architect argued that `the new
movements' in modern art ± including the
`influence of primitive art' and `the interest
homosexuals had shown in the avant garde' ±
`represented the degradation of humankind.' For
a critical assessment of Wright's and Duchamp's
confrontation, Duchamp's edited version of his
symposium comments and Wright's own
remarks, see Bonnie Clearwater, `Trying Very
Hard to Think: Duchamp and the Western
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 ON THE HOT SEAT: MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEWS MARCEL DUCHAMP
Round Table on Modern Art, 1949', and
`Appendix A: The Western Round Table on
Modern Art, San Francisco, 1949', in West Coast
Duchamp, pp. 46±59, 106±114.
61 This theme remains a favourite gambit of
television programmes, including the popular
weekly televised news magazine, Sixty Minutes
(which Wallace is associated) that airs on CBS-
TV every Sunday evening. For Sixty Minutes'
latest foray into this topic, see the rebuttal
comments in `It It Art? Is It Good? And Who
Says So?' New York Times, 12 October 1997,
section 2, p. 36.
62 This entire first section of Wallace's monologue
(`This is Mike Wallace' through `in just one
minute') is included in the script log and is not
on the audio tape. Its insertion here is due to
markings on the page (`1' on the upper right
hand; on the bottom, `3:05, 12/12/60, TAKE/').
63 This section has no page number (see above,
note 62); the upper right of the page has the
marking `2nd Intro.' The emphasis is from the
audio tape.
64 La MarieÂe mis aÁ nu par ses ceÂlibataires, MeÃme
(le Grand Verre), 1915±23, Philadelphia Museum
of Art, Bequest of Katherine S. Dreier.
65 For example, Rotative Plaque verre (Optique de
preÂcision), 1920; Disks Bearing Spirals, 1923; and
Rotative Demisphere (Optique de preÂcision),
1925.
66 In Advance of the Broken Arm, 1915 (original
lost). About the inscription, see Nesbit and
Sawelson-Gorse, `Concept of Nothing', passim.
67 Duchamp said: `Like a piece of metal is worth
so much, and . . . with the same in 1815 1950.'
68 Duchamp would make a similar point on the
panel, `Where Do We Go From Here?', held at
the Philadelphia Museum College of Art on 20
March 1961, as quoted by John Canaday,
`Whither Art?', New York Times, 26 March
1961, section 2, p. 15: `The dollar and art
shouldn't mix, but they do, and since you can't
destroy money, money is destroying art [. . .] Art
now is a commodity like soap or securities.'
69 Duchamp said: `Well, I couldn't tell because I've
never known what they paid for it.'
70 Walter Conrad Arensberg (1878±1954) purchased
the painting in 1919. He and his wife Louise
Stevens Arensberg (1879±1953) bequeathed the
majority of their art collection, including almost
all works by Duchamp in their possession, to the
Philadelphia Museum of Art in December 1950.
The Arensbergs' collection, along with that of
Albert Eugene Gallatin, the museum's other
primary donor of modern works, would shortly
be seen at the Guggenheim Museum in 1961.
71 When Duchamp says `that woman' and `she's
a woman', he chuckles; he also chuckles after
saying `never named me as being the painter'.
The sex of the figure was a point of contention
in an interview Duchamp had on 19 October
1949 at the Art Institute of Chicago with Peter
ß Association of Art Historians 2000
Pollack, Clarence J. Bulliet, Lou Spence, Cloyd
Head and Katharine Kuh. For edited excerpts,
see Naomi Sawelson-Gorse, `The Art Institute of
Chicago and the Arensberg Collection', Art
Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, vol. 19,
no. 1 (1993), pp. 96±101 (on the painting itself,
see p. 100).
72 The issue of `who' was more famous ± the Nude
or the painter ± Duchamp would again address
in later interview: `You know, about that
question of success: you have to decide whether
you'll be Pepsi-Cola, Chocolat Meunier, Gertrude
Stein or James Joyce [. . .] James Joyce is maybe
Pepsi-Cola. You can't name him without
everybody knowing what you're talking about.
What happened to me is worse, though. That
painting (meaning Nude descending a staircase,
which he referred to only as ``that painting''
throughout the interview) was known but I was
not. I was obliterated by the painting and only
lately have I stepped on it. I spent my life hidden
behind it [. . .] It is not desirable to be Pepsi-
Cola. It is dangerous.' See Dore Ashton, `An
Interview with Marcel Duchamp', in her Out of
the Whirlwind: Three Decades of Arts
Commentary (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press,
1987), p. 73. Earlier, in 1959, Duchamp stated
`That ``Nude'' was important to so many people
and I don't know why [. . .] It's a mystery still,
46 years later [. . .] But I never had any idea that
in 1959 we would still speak of it.' See `Art Was
a Dream . . .', p. 118. During the 1961 panel
discussion in Philadelphia, a reporter noted: `A
tour de force of the session was that Mr
Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase was
referred to only by indirection.' See Canaday,
`Whither Art?'
73 The advertisement in the New York Times, 11
December 1960, section 1, p. 138, announced the
sale and exhibition of works by Georges Rouault
(1871±1958) at the Hammer Galleries in New
York (12 December 1960±7 January 1961). The
self-portrait that Wallace refers to was one of
two gouache self-portraits done in 1931, which
the advertisement states were `given by Rouault
to his friend, Edmund HeuzeÂ'. Except for these
and two other gouaches, the works offered for
sale were part of the Ambroise Vollard estate.
The advertised cost of all 31 works was $42,450,
with prices for individual works ranging from
$400 and up. On Vollard, see below, note 74.
74 On Ambroise Vollard (1865±1939), the French
art dealer and publisher, and the unpublished
Rouault volume, see, for instance, Una E.
Johnson, Ambroise Vollard, Editeur. Prints,
Books, Bronzes (New York: Museum of Modern
Art, 1977).
75 Duchamp said: `No, never, not never would pay
that money.'
76 Hellman, `Marcel Duchamp', pp. 26, 27,
mentions several works that he saw when he
interviewed the artist in his apartment, including
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ON THE HOT SEAT: MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEWS MARCEL DUCHAMP
`a chessboard surmounted by unorthodox,
imaginatively sculptured chessmen, a Polynesian
ceremonial carving, several feet high, a large
Miro and a small and a medium-sized Matisse,
and a replica, by Duchamp, of a section of his
Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors [and]
several more Miros and a couple of Balthuses,
a Tanguy, a small Picasso gouache'. Duchamp
offered Hellman the following explanation: `The
chessmen were made by Max Ernst [. . .] The
Matisses belong to my wife.' In 1955, Duchamp
remarked that he had bought back Tzanck Check
of 1919, which was a gift to his dentist, `for my
own collection'. See `Marcel Duchamp', in
Wisdom, p. 98.
77 Duchamp said: `I don't care for . . . I'm . . . I'm
not a collector. You see, an artist is not a
col[lector] . . . as you know, gen[erally] . . .
generally is not a collector, some are in fact. But
I'm not . . . I think an artist doesn't need to be a
collector. Art . . . to be . . . to be an artist is to do
things, to . . . I'm . . . I'm not talking about
myself anymore [Laugh] . . . is to do things. You
don't collect.'
78 In 1949 Duchamp remarked that `The collector ±
the real collector [. . .] is, in my opinion, an artist
± au carreÂ. He selects paintings and puts them on
his wall; in other words, `he paints himself a
collection.' See `The Western Round Table on
Modern Art (1949)', p. 36.
79 Henry McBride (1867±1962) died two years later,
aged ninety-four. One obituary noted that
McBride, `frequently called the dean of art
critics', had been `a remarkable art critic since
1913'. See `Henry M'Bride, Art Critic, Dead',
New York Times, 1 April 1962, p. 86. Art critic
on the New York Sun (until 1950) and on
journals, such as The Dial (1920±29), Creative
Art (1930±32), and later Art News, he had a long
relationship with Duchamp. They collaborated
on Some French Moderns Says McBride (1922) as
well as the Florine Stettheimer retrospective at
the Museum of Modern Art (1946), among other
ventures. Some of McBride's art reviews from the
period 1913 to 1952, and his reminiscences of
Duchamp, are in The Flow of Art: Essays and
Criticisms of Henry McBride, ed. Daniel Catton
Rich (New York: Atheneum, 1975; reprinted Yale
University Press, 1997). Awaited is a fuller
account of McBride's relationship with Duchamp
in a forthcoming book on the critic by Steven
Watson.
80 Canaday, according to `The Beleaguered Critic',
p. 83, disapproved of `personal friendships
between painters and critics' (which was given as
the reason he forced the ouster of Ashton from
the New York Times). It is likely that Canaday
first met Duchamp when he reviewed Surrealist
Intrusion in the Enchanters' Domain. See John
Canaday, `Nostalgia and the Forward Look:
Duchamp Surveys Surrealism and DalõÂ Forges
Ahead in All Directions', New York Times, 4
54
December 1960, section 2, p. 21. See also
Canaday's earlier remarks on the exhibition on
the eve of its opening, `Art: Surrealism With the
Trimmings', New York Times, 28 November
1960, p. 36.
81 Emily Genauer (born 1910), art critic of the New
York Herald Tribune, had recently received the
New York Newspaper Women's Club prize for
best news story (`Frank Lloyd Wright's Spiral
Museum Opens'). See `News Women Give Story
Prizes to 5', New York Times, 12 November
1960, p. 12. She had also been honoured that
year by her alma mater, with a Columbia
University Journal School of Alumni Association
Award. The accolades were somewhat of a
vindication. In 1949 she and three other New
York newspaper journalists were accused of
being sympathetic to so-called radical artists by
the red-baiting congressman from Michigan,
George A. Dondero ± thus implying a communist
tinge upon Genauer and her colleagues. Because
of Dondero's accusations, Genauer was
immediately dismissed from the New York
World-Telegram after serving as its art critic for
seventeen years (just as quickly, she was hired by
the New York Herald Tribune). Genauer's
dismissal and the politics that affected her
journalistic position as well as Dondero's
reprisals following the publication of her
interview with the congressman (see Emily
Genauer, `Still Life with Red Herring', Harper's,
vol. 199, no. 1192 [September 1949], pp. 88±91;
and George A. Dondero, `Is Harper's Magazine
Biased?', in Congressional Record [81st
Congress], extension of remarks of 13 October
1949), became a cause ceÂleÁbre in New York art
circles. Duchamp, himself, was accused by
Dondero of being a `red' and aiding `in the
destruction' of American `standards and
traditions', which some conjectured delayed his
obtaining US citizenship until 1955. See
Sawelson-Gorse, `The Art Institute of Chicago
and the Arensberg Collection', pp. 88, 109, n. 25;
and the author's forthcoming article on
Duchamp's US citizenship application that
includes materials from US government files
obtained through the Freedom of Information
Act.
82 John Canaday, `Wright versus Painting: The
Guggenheim Museum', New York Times, 21
October 1959; reprinted in Canaday, Embattled
Critic, pp. 200±203. The article begins: `The
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum [. . .] is a war
between architecture and painting in which both
come out badly maimed.' Although Wright
received the museum commission in 1943, the
museum did not open until 21 October 1959,
after the architect's death. Sweeney resigned as
the museum's director the following summer due
to differences between his and the museum's
ideals. He was subsequently hired by the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. On Sweeney, his
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 ON THE HOT SEAT: MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEWS MARCEL DUCHAMP
attitude towards Wright's museum architecture,
and his departure from the Guggenheim, see
`Inside Job', Newsweek, vol. 54, no. 17 (26
October 1959), p. 120; Sanka Knox, `Guggenheim
Museum Director Resigns in Difference of
``Ideals''', New York Times, 21 July 1960, pp. 1,
18; and `Museum or Cupcake?', Newsweek, vol.
56, no. 5 (1 August 1960), p. 75.
83 A small (neither comprehensive nor exhaustive)
sampling of such statements. Sargeant, `Dada's
Daddy', p. 100: ```You know, he hasn't painted a
picture since 1923,'' an anxious lady remarked.
``What a pity! He had done practically nothing in
all that time except play chess'''; `The Brothers',
p. 74: `In 1923, after a few zestful years as a
leader of the Dadaists [. . .], he decided to give up
painting for good in favour of chess'; `Art Was A
Dream . . .', p. 118: `[A]fter spending eight years
on a nine-foot abstraction, painted on glass and
titled ``The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors
Even'', Duchamp abandoned all art activity in
favor of chess'; Coates, `Eilshemius and
Duchamp', p. 143: `Duchamp's eccentricity lies
mainly in the fact that he [. . .] stopped painting
[. . .] in his middle thirties. [T]he halt was
brought about philosophically, as a man who
regarded himself as a dilettante might give up
a pursuit that no longer interested him and turn
to other things ± in Duchamp's case to the
fabrication of his famous ``ready-mades'', or
arrangements of ``found'' objects; to the
production of his equally famous Valises [. . .];
and to chess, at which he is a master'; Hellman,
`Marcel Duchamp', pp. 25±6: `Marcel Duchamp,
who, after the second version of his ``Nude
Descending a Staircase'', exhibited at the New
York Armory Show of 1913, made him world-
famous, tapered off during the next ten years
[. . .] and then quit altogether, to devote himself,
with limited fanfare, to Surrealist perfume
bottles, to optical experiments with revolving
glass discs painted in rotary designs, to ceilings
made of coal sacks, and to chess'; and Matthew
Josephson, `Anti-Artist or Prophet?', The Nation,
vol. 190, no. 6 (6 February 1960), p. 124:
ß Association of Art Historians 2000
`Duchamp [. . .] so esoteric a man [. . .] sought
``solitude'' in New York, where he devoted
himself mainly to chess, mathematics, word-
games and the invention of non-operational
machines and ``readymade''. [H]e described
himself as ``an unfrocked artist''.'
84 Duchamp's speech was slightly slurred here: he
said `resposezenos' as if one word. I interpret this
as melding two words, `respose' [sic] and `Zen'
(on `Zen', see below, note 85). `Respose'
seemingly conflates verb conjugations of `reposer'
(to repose) with `respirer' (to breathe). In an
earlier statement to Newsweek, Duchamp stated:
`I suppose you could say I spend my time
breathing [. . .] I'm a respirateur ± a breather.'
See `Art Was a Dream . . .', p. 119. I am grateful
to George L. Gorse, Dickran Tashjian and
Michael Taylor for their attentive ears repeatedly
listening to `resposezenos'.
85 Duchamp said `Zenos' (see above, note 84). One
can interpret this word as `Zen' (as I do in the
transcription), which has a logic in the sentence;
although `Zenos' could refer perhaps to the early
Greek philosopher and mathematician, Zeno (of
Elea; for a summary of Zeno's laws of motion,
see The Oxford Classical Dictionary [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1957], pp. 964±5), or to another
early Greek philosopher by the same name who
founded the Stoic school of philosophy.
Duchamp's friends, Brancusi and Cage, were
both interested in Eastern philosophies; Cage, in
particular, was heavily influenced by Zen. When
interviewers asked Cage if Duchamp `taught like
a Zen master', Cage responded: `I asked him
once or twice, ``Haven't you had some direct
connection with oriental thought?'' And he
always said no.' Remarking on `specific oriental
sources' for Duchamp's concept of indifference
(vis-aÁ-vis the readymades), Cage said it `was the
same idea,' although in Duchamp's case, `it
didn't come from the Orient directly, but perhaps
indirectly.' See Moira and William Roth, `John
Cage on Marcel Duchamp: An Interview', Art in
America, vol. 61, no. 6 (November±December
1973), p. 74.
55