When I was a kid, I had a copy of Chessmaster 3000... And I seem to remember that one of the sets was very similar to Man Ray's. Were they identical? At the time I was very annoyed that they did not look like the Staunton pattern chessmen that my Great-Grandmother had purchased for me on my fifth birthday...

Ah, memories.

Most of the stuff on Duchamp is by art-world writers with little feeling for chess; some of it, much less, is by chessplayers who misconstrue the art.

"He seems, on the whole, to have been a good deal more serious about chess than he ever was about art, and he has made no secret of his opinion that as an activity of the human mind, chess is much purer than art, because it is in no danger of being corrupted by money."

French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, having an impact on Dada, Surrealism, and Cubism, among others. He invented the genre of Readymades. He was also excellent at chess and played professionally for a time. Among other tournaments, Duchamp played in the Belgian chess championship, four French championships, and four Olympiads in the 20’s and 30’s. He designed the poster for the 1925 French championships in Nice, and the French Chess Federation awarded him the title of chess master.

Chess was the subject of several of his works of art, including his well-known “Portrait of Chess Players” (below) in the Cubist style from 1911. Duchamp said of this work that the two players were his brothers Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon, with whom he played chess as a boy.

LOL! Ok, this is a chess site and I suppose it's forgiveable but this bio is just a tad absurd... (no doubt Duchamp would have approved...)

Here's an impromptu Art Historical blurb attepting to do Duchamp's art career justice...

In as much as artists can be ranked, most contemporary Art historians consider Duchamp to be among a handful of "most important artists" of the 20th century... if one rates influence as the surest measure of importance, Duchamp is arguably the most important artist of the 20th century.

Thru Dadaism (Duchamp should not be called a surrealist though some of his associates turned that way) Duchamp sent 20th century art on it's radically intellectualized course, valorizing concept above execution. Duchamp's grasped that art could be the idea the work as much as, or more, than the work's crude physical appeal to the senses. Physical "beauty" (whatever that means) became for Duchamp a tired non-starter when placed against the bracing shock of wholly new ideas <about> beauty. So, Duchamp's physical products were the fulfillment of theses -- it was in the thesis itself wherein the art resides.

This notion of "conceptual" art specifically, and the consequent intellectualization of art it encourages in general, come to dominate the painting, sculpture and music given most attention and praise by academic Art critics of the 20th century. (Even in the face of almost complete popular rejection as in the case of much 20th century Art music.)

Duchamp's long abandonment of art to pursue the unmuddied abstraction of chess makes more sense when one understands Duchamp's lifelong attraction to the realm of pure idea.

But because negation, and even more, nullity, were elements in Duchamp's unprecedented deconstruction of Art, (Duchamp has been called the father of Warhol, but he is at least Derrida's uncle, as well...), one can argue that turning away from Art to chess was a last conceptual gesture. An eloquent erasure. Abandonent of Art as Art. Like Beckett's half-mad whispering into the void -- without the whispering.

And the coda to Duchamp's career -- his last works -- allow the master of the head-scratching "huh?" a final contradiction, the negation of a negation... it's the seeing that matters... perfect.