SPRAGGETT ON CHESS: 2009-09-27

SPRAGGETT ON CHESS

http://www.cargentinodeajedrez.com.ar/2009/torneos/1magistral_duchamps/duchamps.htm

A round robbin tournament named in honour of the late Marcel Duchamp, French-born chess master and one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, is presently being held at the prestigious Argentine Chess Club in Buenos Aires. Some of the best known GMs in South America are participating, including Gilberto Hernandez and Carlos Garcia Palermo.

“El tablero vivo” Marcel Duchamp – Eva Babitz 1963

Why Buenos Aires, you might ask? Apart from the obvious question of honour and prestige, while still a young artist, Marcel Duchamp fell in love with chess while staying in Buenos Aires in 1918 and this passion would stay with him for the rest of his life. When he eventually returned to Paris he started to dedicate more time to the game than to his art! So obsessed did he become with the game, that once his wife became so infuriated with him that she glued the chess pieces to the board!

''...I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” Marcel Duchamp

PHOTOS FROM THE TOURNAMENT

Opening ceremony. GM Carlos Palermo picking his number in the sorteo

International Arbiter Blas Marino Pingus explaining the rules

IA Blas Marino Pingus starting the clock

An overview of the playing hall; GM Sergio Slipak is white today

Gilberto Hernandez is white today

Hernandez against Palermo

Notice the glass window that separates the playing hall from the spectators!

The Club Argentino de Ajedrez is located in central Buenos Aires not far from the Obelisk. This is one of the oldest and most prestigious chess clubs in South America, and houses a chess museum that contains a number of remarkable items, including (below) the board, pieces, chess clock and table and chairs used in the 1927 World Chess Championship match between Capablanca and Alekhine!

Only Capablanca and Alekhine are missing!

A bit about Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp (28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period. (wiki)

Marcel(left) with his brothers Jacques and Raymond, both also artists

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-gare circles of his time. (wiki)

The Fountain

Transition from art to chess (wiki)

In 1918 Duchamp made a hiatus from the New York art scene, interrupting his work on the Large Glass, and went to Buenos Aires, Argentina. He remained for nine months and often played chess. He even carved from wood his own chess set, with the assistance of a local craftsman who made the knights.

He moved to Paris in 1919, and then back to the United States in 1920. Upon his return to Paris in 1923, Duchamp was, in essence, no longer a practicing artist. Instead, he played chess, which he studied for the rest of his life to the exclusion of most other activities.

Duchamp can be seen, very briefly, playing chess with Man Ray in the short film Entr'acte (1924) by Rene Clair. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueGdyVLLqp0

He designed the 1925 Poster for the 3rd 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 chess master. In 1932 Duchamp won the Paris Championship, as well as a minor tournament in New York

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 Olympiads from 1925-1933: Paris 1925, The Hague 1928, Hamburg 1930, Prague 1931 and Folkestone 1933. Duchamp favored hypermodern openings such as the Nimzo-Indian.

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 correspondence chess and became a chess journalist, writing weekly newspaper columns.

The Bar Meliton, in Cadaques, was Duchamp's favourite place to play chess

Addicks J. - Duchamp M.
1931.

1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 b6 3. c4 e6 4. Nc3 Bb4 5. Qc2 Bb7 6. Nd2 Nc6 7. e3 e5 8. d5 Ne7 9. a3 Bxc3 10. Qxc3 d6 11. e4 Qd7 12. Be2 Ng6 13. h4 Nf4 14. Bf3 h5 15. g3 Ng6 16. Bg2 c6 17. Bh3 Qc7 18. dxc6 Qxc6 19. f3 Bc8 20. Nf1

20... Nxe4! 21. fxe4 Qxe4 22. Kf2

22... Nxh4! 23. Rh2 Bxh3 24. gxh4 Qf5 25. Kg3 Bxf1 26. Be3 Qg4 27. Kf2 Bxc4 28. Rg1 Qf5 29. Ke1 Rc8 30. Qd2 d5 31. Rg5 Qf1# [0:1]

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."

A victim of chess. But a happy victim!

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.”

Duchamp's pocket chess set

In 1932 Duchamp teamed with chess theorist Vitaly Halberstadt to publish L'opposition et cases conjuguées sont réconciliées (Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled), known as corresponding squares.
http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/~ahugill/writings/chess.htm

This treatise describes the Lasker-Reichhelm position, an extremely rare type of position that can arise in the endgame. Using enneagram-like charts that fold upon themselves, the authors demonstrated that in this position, the most Black can hope for is a draw.

The theme of the "endgame" is important to an understanding of Duchamp's complex attitude towards his artistic career. Irish playwright Samuel Beckett was an associate of Duchamp, and used the theme as the narrative device for the 1957 play of the same name, "Endgame". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbW_5_WE7hg

In 1968, Duchamp played an artistically important chess match with avant-garde composer John Cage at a concert entitled "Reunion". Music was produced by a series of photoelectric cells underneath the chessboard, triggered sporadically by normal game play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ5Cl30_KvE

On choosing a career in chess, Duchamp said: "If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him - as if anyone could - but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted."

Duchamp left a legacy to chess in the form of an enigmatic endgame problem he composed in 1943. The problem was included in the announcement for Julian Lev's gallery exhibition "Through the Big End of the Opera Glass", printed on translucent paper with the faint inscription: "White to play and win."

''Grandmasters and endgame specialists have since grappled with the problem, with most concluding that there is no solution.'' (wiki)

Since then the mystique has been dispelled and the solution worked out. It is not difficult!
http://www.toutfait.com/online_journal_details.php?postid=47066#

Grandmaster Larry Evans(above, left) knew Marcel Duchamp (right) very well and published the problem in his popular chess column, offering 15 dollars (!) for the correct solution. He was inundated with correct solutions and the whole venture turned out to be very expensive. (More on this on the above link!)