Marcel Duchamp

His ten planets divide three in air, three in water, two in fire and two in earth, with four cardinal and four fixed, and Mercury alone was retrograde. The record says Duchamp submitted a urinal to an exhibition in 1917 and changed what art could be, then largely gave it up for chess, at which he represented France.

Saturn sits a fifth of a turn from Uranus at under a fifth of a degree, the closest contact here, and the reading is practical innovation: new ideas that are actually built, and an unusual patience for slow change. For an artist whose most consequential act was choosing an object and declaring it finished, order and revolt on workable terms is the contact that fits, and this chart has nothing closer to offer.

The Sun sits on the sixth degree of Leo with Mercury at six as well, conjunct at just over a degree, where identity is unusually solid and unusually visible. It sits sixty degrees from Pluto at a quarter of a degree, power that is usable rather than overwhelming, and in mild friction with Venus at four tenths. Jupiter sits square Saturn at just under half a degree, expansion against caution: the swing between taking far too much on and taking nothing on. A man who represented a country at chess and largely stopped making art is that swing seen from the far end of it. The Moon answers from Scorpio at seventeen and its sign is certain.

He died at Neuilly on 2 October 1968, at eighty one. The transiting Sun stood conjunct his natal Uranus at under a fifth of a degree that day, the closest thing in that sky, with Uranus in easy contact with his natal Neptune at half and Venus square his natal Mercury at four fifths. The Moon was at its first quarter and eighty three per cent lit, a phase that acts decisively and often has to break something to do it.