All sorts of chess trivia

Seriously?

To get back in track ...

Some say the first American chess champion of the world was Paul Morphy of New Orleans.  He was clearly the strongest player of his day, though his "reign" was brief.

If you are interted in reading more about Morphy, I suggest Paul Morphy: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess, by David Lawson.

I think the case can be made that the first "American" world champion was Wilhem Steinitz! "American" can describe anyone who lives in the Americas.  And the United States is a country of immigrants.

Steinitz, a Bohemian by birth (Prague, 1836), was sent to the 1862 London tournament as the representative of the Austrian Empire.  He stayed there, married, and eventual became a British subject.

Steinitz was widely considerd the strongest active player in the world after he defeat the German Aldof Anderssen in 1866.  But so long as Morphy was alive, Steinitz never claimed a world chanionship.

In 1882, Steinitz was invited to Philadelphia by the chess patron, David Thompson.  Steintiz, feeling somewhat ostracized in England (feeling a "foreigner for 20 years"), relocared to the United States.  He took up residence in New York City, which remained his home for the rest of his life.

After Morphy passed away in 1884, a match between the two strongest recognized players at the time, was organized between Steinitz and Zucktort.  The match was adverized and widely recognized as for the World Championship.

The 1886 match was played in New York, St. Louis, and New Orleans.  New York resident Wilhelm Steinitz secured the title with 10 wins, 5 draws, and 5 losses.

Wilhelm Steinitz - first American world champion of chess.

Back off track, sort of ...

"(Art) Dealer Francis Naumann played Yoko Ono on her all–white chess board, Play It by Trust, 2002, during the exhibition "Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess" at his gallery last fall."

All-white chess board??  LOLZ

I think Jen Shahade is wonderful.  I love her YouTube videos.  They sort of kept me in touch with the game.  She also made a video, entitled "Naked Chess," in behalf of a publication about Marcel Duchamp.

With regard to the image, above, Shahade is, after all, taking part in a simultaneous exhibition!

But please, friends, fewer naked pictures ... especially if the men are butt ugly. ;^)

The source of Quote #28 was this blog by Jen Shahade

http://www.jennifershahade.com/site/2011/12/04/naked-chess-in-amsterdam/

Except today the "constraining idea" isn't feminity, but feminism.

Is it this one?

http://deludoscachorum.blogspot.com.es/

(To post a link, just cut and paste the link to the target document.  I highlight the address, tight click, copy.  Then, when I want to put it, put active cursor in the document, right click, paste.)

Duchamp's a funny guy -- one of his pieces of art is literally a mass produced urinal.

No. It's a photo of a mass-produced urinal.

That was the end product, but that's not the point.

Actually, the point is precisely that it's a photo, and not the item itself. The photo was one of the earliest works of appropriation, taking a pre-existing object and incorporating it into a piece of art.

I didn't think that was so much the point as it was simply a preference. There is a point to the art, but I didn't think that the main one was simply the fact that it was a photograph, even though it happened to be one -- even if it wasn't a photograph I still think it would have worked.

Perhaps I'm wrong, though.

Ok... first of all I could be wrong to, of course. What I'm saying isn't that the point is that it's a photograph. Rather, the point is that it isn't simply the item itself. The artist did not simply find the item - he did something with it after finding it. Whether what the artist did was take a photograph or something else is perhaps (for lack of a better word) irrelevant, but it's important that he did do something with it.

Thank you very much. :-)

I am already brushing up on my Spanish, as I can only pick up a few words here and there.  First thing I had to do was look up the piece names in Spanish and their abbreviations!

There is a problem he posted 13 de Abril 2014 that I wish to repost here!  You were very kind to point that blog out to me.

I have not found the tablero blanco (?) yet!

Ok, but he signed it for example -- so even if it wasn't a photograph, it would still be the case that he did something with it.

That's true... at least as far as I understand.

Critics tend to declare that Marcel Duchamp's urinal, entitled “Fountain”, is the most important artwork of the 20th century. Yet its standing as a collectable object has always lagged behind its value as an idea. The work questioned notions of authenticity when Duchamp first purchased the mass-produced plumbing fixture and signed it “R. Mutt” in 1917. Now, over 40 years after the artist's death, the problem of legitimacy remains relevant as unauthorised urinals have been discovered circulating in Italy. The art world loves paradoxical conceptual gestures, but it seems that someone might be taking the piss.

“Fountain” was the first ready-made that Duchamp engineered for scandal. The artist was a member of the board of the Society of Independent Artists, whose exhibition had no jury and was set to be the largest in America. He knew that most people would perceive the work as a prank, particularly if submitted by an unknown Richard Mutt from Philadelphia. When the board duly voted against it, Duchamp and his chief patron, Walter Arensberg, resigned in protest—a story that was swiftly leaked to the New York papers.

The ready-made had its public debut a few weeks later in an art magazine called the Blind Man. A photo of the urinal by Alfred Stieglitz was published alongside the founding manifesto of conceptual art, which included the words: “Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it.” The urinal then went the way of many of Duchamp's early ready-mades; it was smashed or trashed. So insignificant was the porcelain pissoir at the time that no one can remember exactly what happened to it.

http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/art/artview/rogue-urinals

To be honest I'm not even really that big of a fan of it, despite its originality.