Art & Creativity Quote by Alexander Alekhine

Alekhine isn’t just elevating chess; he’s drafting a manifesto for how he wants to be judged. Calling chess “not a game, but an art” is a bid to move the activity out of the arena of pastime and into the realm of vocation, where seriousness is not optional and results are only part of the story. He’s insisting that a brilliant combination should be read less like a lucky trick and more like a composed object: intentional, structured, expressive.

The second sentence does the real work. “I take upon myself” turns a preference into a posture of duty. Artists don’t get to plead “it’s only entertainment” when the work turns ugly or obsessive; they accept discipline, sacrifice, and a kind of moral accounting to the craft. Alekhine is claiming that standard for himself, which is also a subtle demand that the public and rivals adopt it: treat my play as authorship, not merely competition. It’s self-mythmaking with a purpose.

Context matters. Alekhine came of age when chess was rapidly professionalizing, with champions becoming international celebrities and games circulating as annotated texts. Framing chess as art dignifies the grind of study and the hunger to innovate; it also grants cover for a consuming temperament. The subtext is ambition with a halo: if the board is a canvas, then domination isn’t just winning - it’s creating something that outlives the score sheet.