“the idea of movement…. just transferred from the Nude [ Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 - Duchamp painted this in 1912] into a bicycle wheel [ Bicycle wheel, his early ready-made from 1916-17].”

— Marcel Duchamp

Quote in Looking at Dada, eds. Sarah Ganz Blythe & Edward D. Powers - The Museum of Modern Art New York, ISBN: 087070-705-1; p. 41
Duchamp is looking back shortly before his death in 1968
1951 - 1968

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Marcel Duchamp66

French painter and sculptor 1887–1968

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“Marcel Duchamp's 'Nude descending the stairs' is the result of the desire for motion. Here he has also eliminated representative form. This avoids the connotation of ideas which would interfere with the success of the main issue - the sense of movement.”

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Source: en.wikiquote.org - Alexander Calder / Quotes of Alexander Calder / 1930s - 1950s / Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture', (1933)

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“The bicycle is a city thing, virtually useless anywhere excepting on a pavement or hard surface of some kind. Without the road it would never have been invented. It is a little mad, both in design and purpose. Two wheels held together in a frame, with a simple mechanical system enabling a forward movement for one person.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

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“Now, if you [his sister, Suzanne Duchamp ] have been up to my place, you will have seen, in the studio, [his former studio in France, probably in Paris] a 'Bicycle Wheel' and a 'Bottle Rack'. [both art-works became later famous ready-mades of Duchamp] – I bought this as a ready-made sculpture [sculpture tout faite]. And I h have a plan concerning this so-called bottle rack. Listen to this. Here in N. Y., I have bought various objects in the same taste and I treat them as 'ready-mades'. You know enough English to understand the meaning of 'ready-made' [tour fait] that I give these objects. – I sign them and think of an inscription for them in English. I'll give you a few examples. I have, for example, a large snow shovel on which I have inscribed at the bottom: In advance of the broken arm, French translation: 'En avance dus bras cassé' – (Don't tear your hair out) trying to understand this in the Romantic or impressionist or Cubist sense – it has nothing to do with all that. Another 'readymade' is called: Emergency in favour of twice possible French translation: Danger \Crise \en favour de 2 fois. This long preamble just to say: Take this bottle rack for yourself. I'm making it a 'readymade' remotely. You are to inscribe it at the bottom and on the inside of the bottom circle, in small letters painted with a brush in oil, silver white colour, with an inscription which I will give you herewith, and then sign it, in the same handwriting, as follows: [after] Marcel Duchamp.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

long quote from Duchamp's letter to his sister Suzanne Duchamp, New York, c. 15 Jan. 1916; as quoted in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 pp. 157-158
1915 - 1925

“I don't wear anything in bed. But I'm not ready for a nude scene quite yet.”

Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster

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“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

“The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.”

Christopher Morley book Parnassus on Wheels

Source: Parnassus on Wheels

“In the valley a bicycle is just as necessary as a pair of shoes, in fact more so. Because even if a man hasn’ t any shoes he can still ride a bicycle, whereas if he hasn’ t a bicycle he must surely travel on foot.”

Giovannino Guareschi (1908–1968) Italian journalist, cartoonist and humorist

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“.. he [is Kirchner, writing about himself] was especially interested in the naturally naked human being. He knowingly broke the traditional manner of the nude study and created for himself in his studio [in his Brücke-years in Berlin] a circle of young women, whom he studied in their free movement. Thousands of drawings and hundreds of paintings and studies resulted from this. A beautiful, healthy, blossoming sensuality that never turns base emanates from these works.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Kirchner; as quoted in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen, Andreas Gabelmann (Claire Louise Albiez, translation); Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 28
undated

“Serious color studies of nudes and heads. Only as practice and first training. Very strict determination of color values through water color. On top of it, some oils, simply for blending. The results are quite unattractive, little of importance to be hoped for here. This month of February is devoted to color. I painted many nudes from nature and even the portrait of a head, my syster's!”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1903), # 485, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1903 - 1910

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