Money is no object: by deciding early on that he would not depend for a living on sales of his work, Marcel Duchamp took a crucial step toward freeing his art from material constraints and the vicissitudes of commerce - Duchampiana II - Museum Jean Tinguely, Basel - Critical Essay

Art in America, March, 2003 by Francis M. Naumann

"I wanted the whole body of work to stay together," Duchamp later explained to Cabanne. "Moreover, I found that my works weren't numerous enough to make a profit painting after painting. And, above all, I wanted as much as possible not to make money. Generally, the paintings I sold were my old ones." (31) As this statement indicates, toward the end of his life, Duchamp wanted everyone to know that he made very little money off the sale of his own work and, even more importantly, that he had a relatively low opinion of artists who made art only to make money. "Painters make a lot of money," he told Otto Hahn. "They really rake it in ... and I don't blame them. They're quite right, but I can't help putting them in the same class with good business men." (32) He was especially upset at the enormous prices being paid by collectors for the work of contemporary artists, and he felt that the perpetuation of this system could have a detrimental effect on the art being produced. "I would have to hate the mixture of art and money as water in your wine," he told William Seitz in 1963.

It's a very good comparison because it dilutes into mediocrity. Water in wine. The bouquet disappears.... We have so many standards: the gold standard, the platinum standard, and now the burlap standard. It's surprising that a piece of cloth, a piece of burlap on a stretcher with a few nails, can bring such prices.... Between 1946 and now the thing has become a crazy machine of money.... It seems today that the artist couldn't survive if he didn't swear allegiance to the good old mighty dollar. (33)

According to Duchamp, the only way to avoid mixing art and money would be for artists to go underground, to remove themselves from the temptation of money. "If there is an important fellow from now in a century or two--well! He will have hidden himself all his life in order to escape the influence of the market." (34) It is hard to imagine that Duchamp did not have himself in mind when he made this statement, for he had been working underground for nearly 20 years, during which time he attempted to shield his work from speculation and adamantly refused to allow whatever new work he made to enter the competitive contemporary art market.

Duchamp's well-known disdain for the commercialization of his work seemed to many to have changed when, in 1964, he authorized the Italian art dealer Arturo Schwarz to make an edition of eight signed and numbered examples of his most important early readymades. Some of the artist's most loyal supporters failed to understand why he would allow this edition to be made. "The value of the gesture that gave all the beauty to the ready-made seemed to me compromised," remarked Max Ernst. "The provocation that scandalized the United States and set off a storm of enthusiasm in European capitals where Dada was established, risked falling to zero." (35) From a commercial aspect, Ernst's sentiments are understandable, for although a work of art can be made without regard to its monetary value, it is inconceivable that a commercial gallery would create an edition without the intention of generating income. So far as is known, Schwarz was successful in selling only two complete sets of the readymades: one to the National Gallery in Canada and another to the Cordier and Ekstrom Gallery in New York (this latter set susequently acquired by the University Art Museum in Bloomington, Indiana). The sets sold for $25,000 each, of which Duchamp received 50 percent. "I'm getting something out of it," he told Calvin Tomkins when asked about the success of the edition. "We can travel first class now, except, of course, on airplanes." (36)