Posted by William Wilson on June 13, 19100 at 19:20:27:
In Reply to: Re: Duchamp and chess posted by Ian Randall on June 11, 19100 at 00:04:19:
Chess: to interpret a game of chess in the life-world of M.D. a look at football in contrast with baseball can delineate the issues. Time is a thematic component of games and of sports, and of some art which deprives time of its seriousness. A game of football or basketball imposes units of time on the action. An abstract measure of time is divided, and those divisions mark the limits of play, with occasional questions of an event that occurs on the second within a quarter and the second without the quarter. Might one measure in a tenth of a second? A thousandth? Mischievous with time, one can play against the clock. Contrarily, the game of baseball constructs its units from within by the actions that occur, so that an inning could be a few minutes or an hour. The difference between imposed temporal units and self-constructing temporal units is a philosophic difference between transcendental (abstract objects) and immanent (concrete objects. Chess has become a temporal anomaly, with no inherent temporal measure, but with self-chosen temporal unfreedoms. Understanding of Duchamp and chess requires description of the timing of his games in relation to the clocks and the conventions of their use. The clock in chess is not inherent, it belongs historically with the metronome in music. Minutely precise details are necessary to understand Duchamp, not generalizations. Did he play with a clock? In accord with which conventions? Did he pause and delay? How would he respond to a blitz? If he played in measured temporal units, did he develop a temporal rhythm? Did he start fast to save time for later? The temporal mode in which Duchamp played chess cannot but be an elaboration of temporalities in his life and in his art. Elsewhere I am developing this theme of time in Duchamp’s delays, his aesthetic postponements, his underpainting ever awaiting further painting, and his arrival on time in 1964 for “Relâche."