Marcel DUCHAMP

Marcel Duchamp (28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968)is a surrealist artist . Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-second war Western art.
A playful man, Duchamp challenged conventional thought about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much by writing, but through subversive actions such as dubbing a urinal "art" and naming it fountain . He produced relatively few artworks, while moving quickly through the avant garde circles of his time.He was the first to show that a manufactured thing can also be a artistic thing.

According himself,the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution.This is very close of what John Cage did in the musical word and in a way very close of the quantic physic about reality and observators.

OK all this maybe very nice but we are in the chess blog you can think!Duchamps was also a very strong chessplayer:
Duchamp can be seen, very briefly, playing chess  in the short film Entreacte (1924) . He designed the 1925 Poster for the Third French Chess Championship, and as a competitor in the event, finished at fifty percent (3-3, with two draws). Thus he earned the title of National master. During this period his fascination with chess so distressed his first wife that she glued his pieces to the board. Duchamp continued to play in the French Championships and also in the chess olympiad from 1928-1933.
Sometime in the early 1930s, Duchamp reached the height of his ability, but realized that he had little chance of winning recognition in top-level chess. In following years, his participation in chess tournaments declined, but he discovered correspondance chess and became a chess journalist, writing weekly newspaper columns. While his contemporaries were achieving spectacular success in the art world by selling their works to high-society collectors, Duchamp observed "I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position." On another occasion, Duchamp elaborated, “The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”
In 1932 Duchamp teamed with chess theorist  Halberstadt to publish L'opposition et cases conjuguées sont réconciliées .He was a close friend of Alekhine.You can find a lot of his games here:
http://www.chessgames.com/player/marcel_duchamp.html
He was not  the only surrealist  fascinated by Chess,Chirico,Raymond Roussel ,Man ray were also on the bandwagon,so maybe there is a connection between soul and chess?
(a lot of this article is from Wikipedia who in my wiew underline what knowledges would be: free and build by  everyone,each man or woman is a library!)

I want to add something personal:On server a player asked me if I played agains Duchamp?well maybe I am aged but I never played him nor Alekhine or Steinitz and my match agains Morphy was cancelled cause he was afraid of me!