“I force myself into self-contradiction to avoid following my taste.”—Duchamp

THE LEGEND OF MARCEL DUCHAMP, who “turned his back on art” after a brilliant career to devote his en­ergies to chess has never been entirely true. Even if Duchamp gave up oil painting in 1914, and ceased work on his most ambitious project, the “Large Glass,” in 1923, he never abandoned his artistic aspirations (as no artist could), and chess and art were always two forms of exercising his Cartesian mind. He lent his inspiration to the Surrealist manifestations on more than one occasion, of which the Pasadena exhi­bition