ALIVE Q&A: Notable Artist Marcel Dzama Returns to the World Chess Hall of Fame With Dadaist Silent Film

By Krystin Arneson

The World Chess Hall of Fame’s new exhibition, “Marcel Dzama: Mischief Makes a Move,” uses Dzama’s 2013 film “Une danse des bouffons” (“A Jester’s Dance”) as its centerpiece. The Dadaist love story is a black-and-white, fictionalized and surrealist account of the movement’s key player, Marcel Duchamp, and his obsession with chess and his romance with Maria Martins (played by two actresses in the film). The film, which wouldn’t look out of place in the 1920s, runs 35 minutes, and other parts of the exhibit feature 2- and 3-D artwork by Dzama.

Dzama himself is a bright figure on the international arts scene, working across media but often featuring distinct color palettes and fanciful motifs. He’s shown solo around the world, notably at Montreal’s museum of contemporary art and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow, as well as part of group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in NYC (among others). Upon the occasion of his third show at the World Chess Hall of Fame, ALIVE caught up with him to chat about “Une danse.”

ALIVE: How’s your time in St. Louis been? Is this your first visit?

Marcel Dzama: I showed at the WCHOF in 2012, so it’s like visiting relatives—but friendly relatives. The show here featured [my film] “A Game of Chess” and some drawings.

ALIVE: What inspired you to make your centerpiece film?

MD: The Toronto [International] Film Festival was having a retrospective on David Cronenberg—50 years of his films—and there was a curator at the gallery who asked if I’d make a short film for the film festival. So I did it with a bit of Cronenberg inspiration—I didn’t really need to try very hard because my work can easily work off of his. If I was doing an homage to him at the time, I thought I’d include some of my art history heroes—Marcel Duchamp plays a prominent role in the film.

I first saw Duchamp’s work when I was in grade school—I was definitely too young to understand anything, but it was in the back of my head all the time. In the early 2000s, I went to Philadelphia—I went to see “The Large Glass” [\The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors