The Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp

196pp, with 90 illustrations.  Laminated stiff card covers.  8vo. The covers are well worn and toned, lightly rubbed at edges.  Internally the volume is neat, clean, bright and tight. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) was a French-American artist, chess player and innovator.  He played a key role in the avant-garde and surrealist movements and was the first artist to elevate the humble toilet to an art form.   His Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) provoked much controversy, but so did several of his subsequent work.  He was a keen and talented chess player but realised in the 1930s that he would not reach the top level of play and thus turned his hand to correspondence chess and chess journalism, often overlapping his twin interests in the creative arts and chess-playing.