I’m someone who’s “classic.”

I like striped shirts, 19th-century literature, lovemaking in places designed for it (a bed, or perhaps a sofa bed on a whim), and opening with e4 in chess. In short, very classic.

Yet despite this classic opening, everything unravels. The opponent’s response generates twenty countermoves, each branching into thousands of possible positions, and so on, until we reach the Shannon number. No need to spell it out; let’s simply call it vertigo.

For me, this is where chess reveals all its ambivalence: the infinite contained within a human-sized board. An XXL world at your fingertips. And there, my classic side surrenders, as each game unfolds like an unpredictable story.

Why have artists—Duchamp above all—been so drawn to chess, even to the point of seeking total refuge in it? Is it the game’s infinite depth, which turns it into a quasi-mystical quest (Michel Journiac)? Or its graphic allure, where each piece asserts its form and the imaginary worlds we project onto it (Hildebrandt)? Or perhaps its social dimension (Amélie Bigard), since playing alone risks madness (as Zweig vividly illustrates).

Here, then, are works that delve into this game-vortex.

Some do so directly, others obliquely or even tangentially—but in each I detect a knowing nod.

The selection spans a century, offering a glimpse of modern art history through the lens of chess.

A group show that, for once, is anything but classic. Proof that appearances can be deceiving…

R. Jonathan Lambert