A MoMA Retrospective Proves Duchamp Was More Sincere Than He Seems

The first rooms of MoMA’s Marcel Duchamp retrospective almost dare the visitor to find in his early paintings some hint of the artist’s future travesty of those mediums. The picture with which the show opens—a placid scene of the artist’s two older brothers, Gaston (Jacques Villon) and Raymond, engrossed in a game of chess—telegraphs Duchamp’s future, temporary abandonment of art in favor of the game, which, he avowed, “could not be commercialized.&rdquo