In 2004, a panel of art experts voted Marcel Duchamp
the most influential artist of the 20th Century. But was Duchamp a
genius, or a person who used objects and words to illustrate certain ideas?
“Isn’t that what an artist is?” you might say. But by that definition anyone is
an artist, because we all use objects and words to express ourselves.
Why would Duchamp want to question the value of
retinal art? By retinal art he meant that which pleases the eye, yet we have
centuries of great art that pleases the eye but with intellectual and emotional
depth as well, something Duchamp chose to ignore. Duchamp’s early paintings,
competent though they are, and the fact that he abandoned painting altogether,
suggests that perhaps he realized he would not be the artist he desired to be.
Apart from Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2, 1912,
his works touched on Impressionism and Modernism but without much exploration
or distinction. One could argue that he abandoned painting because he was
destined to change the course of art. But in what way?
Duchamp said that art, etymologically, means to do,
that art means activity of any kind, and that it is our society that creates
purely artificial distinctions of being an artist. By this definition, there is
no difference between creating Rembrandt’s The Nightwatch and sweeping the floor. But such distinctions are not artificially
created by society, they are a fact. Labour and skill will not create a work of
art like The Nightwatch, so what else did Rembrandt put
into his labour that elevates it to such a high achievement?
Duchamp proposed the idea that when an object is
exhibited out of context a new thought is created for that object, which is
art. It is the thought rather than the object that matters. Or as Duchamp put
it when he exhibited a urinal:
Whether Mr Mutt made the fountain
with his own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an article of
life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title
and point of view - created a new thought for that object.
Fountain, 1917
Of course one might look at an object differently when
it is presented in an unfamiliar context, but does that make it art? If a Monet
painting was exhibited in another context it will not alter or negate the
thoughts that are already painted because the art is within its material and is
independent of where that material is exhibited.
Duchamp also proposed that the
viewer is just as important as the artist when he said:
The creative act is not
performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with
the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and
thus adds his contribution to the creative act.
But a response to a work of
art is not the creative act. The art has to be created before it can be responded to. Art has
its own presence in the world whether anyone sees it or not. Like trees in a
forest, even though we are not looking at them, they are still there. Art is
independent of the viewer, that’s why authorship is important, because it’s the
artist who brings it into contact with the external world. The viewer can
extend the art created by the artist into the world, like a ripple in a lake,
but the ripple is different to the stone that caused it.
Duchamp’s viewpoint was a kind of anti-art, opposing
everything that defined the art of the past. He said that he was interested in
ideas, not merely visual products. The word products suggests commodities, but art is never just a visual product, even
though money is associated with it. He opposed aesthetics as a quality that
also attracts sales, but he mistook soul qualities for marketing values. What
time has taught us is that the market is about desirability, and that anything
can be bought and sold if it is desired -
and Duchamp wasn’t spared either. Beginning in 1950, Duchamp started
authorizing curators to purchase urinals in his name, like a printmaker
editioning proofs. One sold for $1.8 million in 1999.
Duchamp also wanted to ‘de-diefy the artist’. His
painting, L.H.O.O.Q. 1919, is his visual joke
about, as he saw it, the overblown importance of the artist. But when his work Nude
Descending a Staircase, No.2 was exhibited at the Armory Show in 1913 in New York, Duchamp became the celebrity
artist himself. In fairness to Duchamp, no-one can be a celebrity or make a lot
of money unless those around them support and promote them, but it is ironic
that Duchamp became the very things he said he opposed.
Nude Descending a
Staircase No 2, 1912, oil on canvas, 147 x 89.2 cm
Art created from traditional mediums is often referred
to as the art object, but that’s a misconception. Art is thoughts within a
material support, which makes it more than its material, identifies it as
something more than an object. This misconception has influenced conceptual
artists when they claim that the idea is more important than the object. But it
doesn’t ring true where we see in so much contemporary art a reliance on huge amounts of materials to support an idea. Sometimes
rooms full of it. So much physicality can overwhelm a concept and give
prominence to objects rather than the importance of the mind.
Much of the contemporary art we see in Biennales and
Triennales is not only Duchamp’s legacy, but is today’s mainstream art,
otherwise known as New Media art - that is, any medium
that avoids the traditions of painting, drawing and printmaking. New Media sees
itself as the avant-garde but calls itself cutting edge. Historically, the avant-garde has always opposed fashionable mainstream
art practice, therefore New Media has either inverted history or sees itself as
the beginning of a new one. We should also reflect on the fact that Duchamp
exhibited his urinal almost a century ago, so his legacy is already a tradition
rather than contemporary cutting edge.
Perhaps no other art form has been so undermined by
the seduction of words as visual fine art. Sol Le Witt proposed that anyone can
draw simply by following his instructions. But his thinking limits those who do
follow his instructions to perpetual pattern making. There is a big difference
between drawing like Degas and making a pattern. Le Witt said that art is like
learning the notes in music and if you can do that then you can make music. But
sometimes we hear it said that someone can play the notes and yet they are not
that musical – a technician rather than a musician. Drawing, like music, comes
from the gods rather than from any text.
Of course, there are wonderful artists who do not use
traditional media, like Bill Viola, Hossein Valamanesh and Louise Bourgeois for
example, artists who have made magical things. But so much that is celebrated
today is a long way from these artists. Before Duchamp, it would be
unimaginable to see a person can their own excrement and sell it as art. Since
Duchamp, we have seen just that, as Piero Manzoni did in 1961.
Duchamp’s legacy has fostered some amazing artists but
the problem is that most conceptual art is on the same level as reality
television, where we see so much banality celebrated. The celebration of it is
the problem. Camille Pissarro once said that he wanted to make the ordinary
into something extraordinary, but today it’s like keeping the ordinary as it
is. Grayson Perry made a telling statement when he said:
I am increasingly being dissatisfied with the
context of the contemporary art space as an arena where I want to put my work.
Things are given a spurious significance by being in the gallery now. It used
to be that you built a gallery to put significant objects in, now you put
insignificant objects in the gallery in order to give them significance.
Duchamp’s viewpoint was primarily a response to the
times in which he lived, but they have passed. Perhaps his legacy needs to be
looked at with more discernment.
Shane Jones
