Research into readymades and Marcel Duchamp
Saturday, May 12th, 2007Duchamp’s ideas and principles created a panicle point in history, its presence enforced the advance of influencing the empire of the digital art scene. This transformed the way people perceived and interacted physically and conceptually with art, no longer would the audience sit back and passively admire the artist work, the audience had to work for the artwork, bringing and engaging the audience in the production of the art piece.
Duchamp’s most famous work mainly consisted of ready-mades. To describe ready-mades in its simplest form “Duchamp once described a ‘ready-made’ as a ‘work of art’ without an artist to make it. In principle the ready-mades are mass produced objects that have been signed and sometimes inscribed by the artist” (Ades et al.1999; 146).
While the ‘ready-mades’ are of a material form, its material aesthetics are only complementary to the complete piece, these artworks could be assembled and reassembled at any time, like wise with Duchamp’s “Bicycle Wheel” (Ades et al.1999; 147). Following this transformation, conceptually based art has attempted to throw away its visual aesthetics, trying to steer away from any material factors. This included some of his most famous pieces such as ‘The Fountain’, this was quite simply a urinal that he claimed was art. In 1917 he decided to exhibit this readymade as Mr. R Mutt in a gallery exhibition, which claimed to be a “free exhibit” (Ades et al.1999; 127) to any one paying the six dollar exhibition fee. However it was rejected on the basis: “Some contended that it was immoral, vulgar and that others believed it was plagiarism, a plain piece of plumbing” (Ades et al.1999; 127). This caused fury to Duchamp and he later resigned from the “society of Independent Artists” (Ades et al.1999; 127). He suggested that a “Rembrandt painting could be used as an ironing board” (Marcel Duchamp 2003). This became recognised by many, the statement strived to raise the question, does art serve more than one function? and that there is more to art than just the material?
“Duchamp recognised that the art object will have a different presence in a world where it’s function is no longer ‘ religious, philosophical, moral’, and that, in the age of facile mechanical reproduction, it will take its value from something other than mimesis in the traditional sense” (Ades et al.1999; 182). “His influence ultimately facilitated a shift in emphasis from painting to three-dimensional work” (Standard papers in History of Art and Visual Culture, no date)
Below I have included some more quotes which made me think, and question some of the processes I have included into my project, and also help with my justification of why I have done certain things.
“In 1913 I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn. A few months later I brought a cheap reproduction o a winter evening landscape, which I called Pharmacy after adding two small dots, one red and one yellow, in the horizon. In New York in 1915 I brought at a hardware store a snow shovel on which I wrote ‘in advance of the broken arm’. It was around that time that the word readymade came to mind to designate this form of manifestation” (Ades et al.1999; 146).
“That is the very difficult point, because art first has to be defined. Alright, can we try to define art? We have tried, everybody has tried and in every century there is a new definition of art. Meaning that there is no essential, no one essential, that is good for all centuries. So if we accept the idea of trying to not define art, which is a very legitimate conception, then the readymade can be seen as a sort of irony, because it says here it is, a thing that I call art, I didn’t even make it myself. As we know art etymologically speaking means to ‘make’, ‘hand make’, and there instead of making, I take it readymade. So it was a form of denying the possibility of defining art” (Ades et al.1999; 151).
Bibliography
Ades, D., Cox, N. & Hopkins, D. (1999), Marcel Duchamp, Thames and Hudson, London.
Webography
Gavin Parkinson (no date) Standard papers in History of Art and Visual Culture [online] Available: http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/postgrad/papers/pg_ma_havc.htm [date accessed: 10 Jan 2007]
Marcel Duchamp (2003) [online] Available: http://fusionanomaly.net/marcelduchamp.html [date accessed: 02 Jan 2007]
