Reigning U.S. Chess Champ Fells Six Opponents in Reprise of Famous Match of 1945
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Checkmate!
In a blindfold match, the reigning American chess champion Wednesday night simultaneously defeated six descendants of famous art world figures.
The event reprised a famous blindfold match in January 1945 when avantgarde artist Marcel Duchamp refereed a tournament in which chess master George Koltanowski simultaneously faced Max Ernst, Alfred Barr Jr., Julien Levy, Dorothea Tanning, Xanti Schawinsky, Frederick Kiesler, and Vittorio Rieti. That match took place during The Imagery of Chess exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York.
During Wednesday’s match at the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, 17-year-old grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura – seated out of sight of the chessboards – relayed his moves over a large televised screen.
The new show at the Noguchi museum collects 40 works from the original show and comes – as was the case in 1945 – as America is engaged in war.
Andre Breton described chess as “hand-to-hand combat between two labyrinths.”
Author Paul Hoffman provided colorful commentary and anecdotes during the match. He said Koltanowski likened his memory to a gramophone, which replayed the individual moves of each game in his head from the beginning, while the current champion, who resides in Westchester, sees each board in a kind of “pattern recognition.”
Mr. Nakamura’s eyes rolled up into his head and moved back and forth, as though mentally scanning each of the six boards sequentially in his head. He looked “almost mystical,” Mr. Hoffman said. Mr. Nakamura began with six different opening moves, a strategy that probably helped the champion keep each game separate in his mind, Mr. Hoffman said.
The referee, Douglas Bellizzi, who is president of the Marshall Chess Club located on West 10th Street, relayed the six opponents’ moves over a walkie-talkie.
Art dealer Julien Levy’s son, Jonathan Bayer, a photographer of industrial landscapes who recently completed a book on milk bottles, was the first to taste defeat. He said he had not played chess in about 50 years. Did he capture any of the champion’s pieces? “We exchanged pawns,” he said.
Alexander Calder’s grandson, Alexander Rower, fell second, managing to capture three pawns and a knight. He said his strategy was to play “completely unconventionally” in an attempt to throw the champion off his game.
Next down was Max Ernst’s grandson, Eric Ernst. He later said he was just hoping to delay the inevitable.
Carpenter Ben Schawinsky, who makes sculptures from wood shavings, lost fourth. “I’ve never been hemmed in so beautifully in my life,” he said. A Surrealist chess assemblage by his father, the Swiss-born designer Xanti Schawinsky, could be seen in adjoining room.
The audience gasped as Paul Matisse, Marcel Duchamp’s stepson and Henri Matisse’s grandson, lost after using up all of his allotted time. Mr. Matisse is a sculptor who designs bells. During the match, he sat pensively, like Rodin’s “Thinker,” so enrapt in the game that he didn’t respond to Mr. Hoffman’s request for a comment.
“He probably played the strongest game of the six,” the founder of Chess Life magazine, Frank Brady, said. Mr. Brady, who wrote a biography of Bobby Fischer, knows something about playing against artists. He had played Duchamp and Max Ernst, as well as regularly competing against John Cage on New Years’ Eve.
When Man Ray’s nephew, Roger Browner, stood up, Mr. Hoffman exclaimed, “A classic Gary Kasparov move! He’s taken off his jacket.”
Mr. Browner was the last to be checkmated. He said he went online during lunch to relearn the chess moves that afternoon. It wasn’t enough.
The record number of simultaneous blindfold play opponents is 52, by Janos Flesch in 1960 in Budapest.
After the match, a crowd poured into the museum for the opening of The Imagery of Chess Revisited to see chess sets featuring pieces in the shapes of eggshells, wineglasses, cubes, and many other imaginative forms.
Coming from Paris was Paul Franklin, who edits a journal about Duchamp called Etant Donne. Mr. Levy flew over from England. The show’s curator, Larry List, was overheard saying that enough people flew in from afar that there should be a “jet lag gallery” at the museum.