Reviving Political Aesthetics: After Duchamp, Even (original) (raw)
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The Bride Machine: Duchamp's Theory of Art Revisited
Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico, 2021
It is a commonplace in certain areas of art theory and contemporary art practices to consider Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades as ordinary objects, which have an artistic value that depends more on a theoretical or institutional framework than on an aesthetic experience. The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the historical emergence of these artifacts on the light of the impact of the industrial production in avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. Discussing Walter Benjamin' s and Jean Brun's insights, it argues that Duchamp's practice has an explanatory principle, both in the mechanical reproduction of the work of art and in the aestheticization of the machine. On the other hand, it brings forward some observations regarding Duchamp's insight on the "total lack of good or bad taste" and the perceptual dimension of a sculptural object as the Large Glass, coming back to Arthur Danto's interpretation of ready-mades and to the notion of "implementation" introduced by Nelson Goodman to define "the process of bringing about the aesthetic functioning that provides the basis for the notion of a work of art".
Marcel Duchamp's Language: Deconstructing the Meaning of the Image
As the ‘inventor’ of the readymade, Marcel Duchamp left an important legacy to twentieth century art. Considered by many critics as the father of post-modernity, certainly a bachelor and bastard father, not only did he successfully displace the question of the ontology of art, but he also questioned art and representation itself. This paper will examine a lesser-known aspect of his work, the ‘Boîtes-en-valise’, (boxes in a suitcase). This will allow me to analyze Duchamp’s impact on visual art, as well as his impact on language and systems of signification. According to Duchamp, the work of art must aspire to transcend the experience of the visible, thus positioning himself as ‘anti -retinal’. He values the idea, the intellectual experience of art, which is why the work that he creates does not exist by itself: works of art are not autonomous. They are manuals, real operating systems that are available to the public, who must use them to complete their interpretation. The text of these manuals will be examined here with the aim of understanding the impact of Duchamp’s language, which is mechanic, neutral and indifferent, but always ends up in an ironic word game. It is a language that also suggests anamorphosis, where the transformation of meaning breaks the relation to the reference. I suggest that this use of language can be thought of as a critique of the institution of art, because the work of art cannot operate without its accompanying commentary. However, it is not up to art history to establish this discourse anymore, for a democratization of the artistic experience is offered by our potential accessibility to this specific language. The ‘boîtes-en-valise’ contain these manuals, as well as all the handwritten notes, letters and sketches of every major work by Duchamp. ‘The White Box,’ for example, is entirely dedicated to the ‘Big Glass’. The last proposition that I will explore concerns the reproducibility of these boxes. Already criticizing authorship and authority, Duchamp uses the reproducibility of the text as a way to position language in the center of the experience of visual art. As such, language is inseparable from the intellectual experience; the work of art does not exist without a public, a public that understands it, that comments on it, that allows art to pursue its trajectory further than the retinal/visual. After all, as Duchamp said, it is the viewers that make the painting.
Creative aspects of ready-made art
isara solutions, 2022
Marcel Duchamp called his idea of ready-mades as a non-artistic strategy that according to him opposed and interrogated traditional theories of art making. However, his own ready-mades involved certain creative approaches that problematize his strategy. All the artists including Duchamp, his contemporaries, as well as artists from post World War era and later 20th and 21st centuries, employed ready-mades or the forms of objects in their works to re inquire the traditional art notions but the original idea of ready-mades got neglected with the unconscious artistic involvements and with formations of crafty replicas of ready-mades. This paper examines the circumstances, reasoning and thought processes of artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Sherrie Levine, Robert Gobber, Mike Bidlo and others, that led them to engage in artistic process. Keywords-Duchamp, Fountain, ready-made, urinal, creative, appropriation 1 Creative aspect of early ready-mades In 1913, Marcel Duchamp gave up painting and began bringing objects from ordinary life into his studio (which he subsequently termed to as his ready-mades, as opposed to 'retinal' art) and juxtaposing them in strange ways. The first object he experimented with was a bicycle wheel, which was followed by bottle rack, snow shovel, steel comb, and coat rack. In the year 1917, a conclusive episode in this series took place when he submitted the urinal with a new title 'Fountain' to a group of exhibition hosted by Society of Independent Artists and was excluded unceremoniously from both the exhibition and catalogue (D,angelo,2018, p.187) In this early stage of object experimentation, Duchamp eschewed 'artistic creation.' However, ready-mades were not created on their own. There had to be some sort of 'activity' taken in order to accomplish this. The formation of ready-mades was invested with artist's efforts. Duchamp rendered his ready-mades dysfunctional with small alterations or by de-contextualising their place (purchasing from stores to placing in studio or gallery). In the instance of Bicycle wheel, he mounted a bicycle fork on a wooden stool with the first wheel in the opposite position, and in the case of 'Fountain,' he rotated it 90 degrees and signed R Mutt on it. Until this moment, he had not used any major 'conventional' creative approach for the ready-mades but these small efforts were also creative and were carried out by an artist. If the ready-mades hadn't been moved from their original locations, they wouldn't have gotten any attention. A urinals installed in a bathrooms today have the same meaning and function. Not all urinals are labelled as 'Fountain.'. Similarly, the position and context of the bottle rack, snow shovel, and coat hanger were purposefully altered. An art work is made up of ideas and
The Readymade & Aesthetics: History and Kantian Defence (2016)
The many permutations of modern art can be viewed as strategies to cope with the threat of obsolescence. The threat from the industrialisation of method and materials challenged painting’s claim to social utility as constructor of resemblances. Consequently, painting changed its "regulations", and was followed by a challenge to the definition of “art”. The readymade was one such strategy. It copes with these threats by completely upturning any ordinarily intuitive idea of aesthetic judgement. This is the challenge to the “retinal” or “physical” aspects of art. Whilst this has great intellectual significance, Duchamp, as its flagbearer, still owes much to the “retinal” in his conceptual steps. This amounts to a crossover with Kantian aesthetics. A history of the readymade will be given, with mention to Dada's two primary schools. It will be argued that a Kantian or "objective" aesthetics is able to accommodate the readymade without the need for Thierry de Duve's "Duchampian substitution". It is suggested that the substantive leap from readymade to “art” is unnecessary and this does not harm the importance of Duchamp's work. This will be investigated with respect to two of Duchamp’s works: In Advance of the Broken Arm (1915) and Trébuchet (1917).