Calvin Tomkins > Quotes

“Oh, I’m a breather, I’m a respirateur, isn’t that enough?” He asked, “Why do people have to work? Why do people think they have to work?” He”
― Calvin Tomkins, Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews

“I think there is a great deal to the idea of not doing a thing, but that when you do a thing, you don’t do it in five minutes or in five hours, but in five years. I think there’s an element in the slowness of the execution that adds to the possibility of producing something that will be durable in its expression, that will be considered important five centuries later.”
― Calvin Tomkins, Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews

“In 1916 and 1920 taxes were nonexistent, or so unimportant that people never thought of them.”
― Calvin Tomkins, Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews

“To do something of your own you’ve got to forget what you’ve learned. And once you begin forgetting, you’re bound to find something…else.”
― Calvin Tomkins, Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews

“What’s interesting is not that somebody would want to paint twenty-seven soup cans. What’s interesting is the mind that would conceive of painting twenty-seven soup cans.” And I think he was getting at something.”
― Calvin Tomkins, Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews

“In the Renaissance, art had been what Leonardo called a cosa mentale. But gradually it had become what Duchamp described as retinal art: something that appealed to the eye, and to the eye alone. He felt that the Impressionist period was completely retinal, and so were the Abstract Expressionists.”
― Calvin Tomkins, Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews

“He said theater had always bored him, but the Happenings were supposed to be boring and so he found them quite entertaining.”
― Calvin Tomkins, Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews

“And the fact that manufactured objects had the advantage of being repeated, that there was an edition of it made by machine, added to the impersonality.”
― Calvin Tomkins, Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews

“things of great importance have to be slowly produced. I don’t believe in speed in artistic production, and that goes with integration.”
― Calvin Tomkins, Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews