DUCHAMP: SEPARATING THE ARTIST FROM THE ARTISAN
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| Large Glass |
Nowadays, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, or whoever else is flavor of the month, can achieve the status of artist, not by what they make with their own hands, but by the ideas they set in motion and the way their fame or notoriety works through the media. The medium is the message and it’s all in the concept, so it seems.
Perhaps nobody was more important in this separation of the artist from the artisan than Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), a fascinating figure who revolutionized attitudes to art and blurred all the convenient boundaries, with a career characterized by genius more than industry. Spanning the early decades of the 20th century, this career, sparse in its output but multifaceted in its aspects, is now on display at a "challenging" exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art.
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23/1980), also known as the Large Glass, is a case in point. The work features precise, enigmatic, machine-like designs on a background of glass.
The basic idea seems to be that by using glass, instead of canvas, Duchamp prevents us ‘resting’ on the image and being satisfied with it in a banal way. Instead, our vision passes through the work and we are forced to resolve the imbalance in mental conception – or possibly a mild headache!
Another puzzle is the enigmatic Three Standard Stoppages (1913-14/1964), a case containing long glass plates and strips of wood, each of which has one side cut into an apparently random curving line. The explanation for this is that the artist dropped a meter-long piece of string on the floor from a height of exactly one meter, captured the resulting curves with glued card then transferred these curves to glass plates and wooden rulers. In this way, the original, absolute standard of measure, the meter, becomes something a lot more flexible and relative. It almost becomes a piece of DNA, reproducing the original, but with variation.
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| Fountain |
“Many of Duchamp’s works are like puzzles,” exhibition curator Naoaki Nakamura points out. “These are works that you can spend a lot of time thinking about.”
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23/1980), also known as the Large Glass, is a case in point. The work features precise, enigmatic, machine-like designs on a background of glass.
“He used glass because he wanted to make art works not as media but as counter-media,” Nakamura attempts to explain.
The basic idea seems to be that by using glass, instead of canvas, Duchamp prevents us ‘resting’ on the image and being satisfied with it in a banal way. Instead, our vision passes through the work and we are forced to resolve the imbalance in mental conception – or possibly a mild headache!
Another puzzle is the enigmatic Three Standard Stoppages (1913-14/1964), a case containing long glass plates and strips of wood, each of which has one side cut into an apparently random curving line. The explanation for this is that the artist dropped a meter-long piece of string on the floor from a height of exactly one meter, captured the resulting curves with glued card then transferred these curves to glass plates and wooden rulers. In this way, the original, absolute standard of measure, the meter, becomes something a lot more flexible and relative. It almost becomes a piece of DNA, reproducing the original, but with variation.
Indeed, this idea of artistic DNA seems to be a theme of the show.
This is a convenient idea for the exhibitors, because several of the major works on display, including the Three Standard Stoppages and Large Glass, are just this. They are not, in fact, the originals, but ‘authentic copies,’ hence the unusual dating, referring to the date of the original and the date when the "authentic" copy was made.
“Duchamp was very interested in the concept of icons,” Nakamura says, in illustration. “Such Christian paintings are said to stem from the original Vera Icon, or the piece of cloth placed on Christ’s face that first captured his image. If a copy of an icon was authentically made, the holy power of the original was believed to be transferred too.”
This is a convenient idea for the exhibitors, because several of the major works on display, including the Three Standard Stoppages and Large Glass, are just this. They are not, in fact, the originals, but ‘authentic copies,’ hence the unusual dating, referring to the date of the original and the date when the "authentic" copy was made.
Large Glass, for example, was made after Duchamp’s death, but according to his precise instructions, and is one of only four examples in the world.
Likewise the famous urinal, Fountain (1917/1964), a found object, with which Duchamp shocked New York’s art scene in 1917, is also missing. In its place is an "authentic" copy from 1964. Unfortunately, it was impossible to transfer much of the original’s power to shock to the copy!
The show also includes works by other artists, a device that is used to both underline Duchamp’s historical importance and comment on his art. They also help the visitor to discern the way ‘artistic DNA’ flows from one influential artist to others. This sometimes results in over-derivative copies, like Sherrie Levine’s unimaginative gold-colored urinal; while also throwing up freaks, like Masanobu Yoshimura’s Oh Karasu (Big Crow), a hilarious 2-meter-tall crow but a cringe-worthy pun on the Japanese name of the Large Glass.” There are also more refined takes, like Tony Cragg’s Spyrogyra (1992), a work that owes enough but not too much to Duchamp’s “Bottle Dryer” (1914/1964).
With his keen intellect and dry sense of humor, Duchamp exerted an enormous influence in Dadaist and Surrealist circles, one far beyond his artistic productivity. But his greatest contribution, if not to art, then certainly to artistic vocabulary, was his notion of taking various readymade objects and setting them in an artistic context, or slightly altering them to give them new meaning. Just like hip-hop in contemporary music, this gave people who lacked technical skills the means to participate.
Duchamp may now be most famous for elevating a urinal to the status of an art object, and, in the process, opening the floodgates to a whole host of less talented conceptual artists, but as his early Futurist paintings prove, he was also somebody who could daub quite well.
C.B.Liddell
Asahi Shimbun
18th February, 2005
Likewise the famous urinal, Fountain (1917/1964), a found object, with which Duchamp shocked New York’s art scene in 1917, is also missing. In its place is an "authentic" copy from 1964. Unfortunately, it was impossible to transfer much of the original’s power to shock to the copy!
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| Oh Karasu (Big Crow) |
Duchamp may now be most famous for elevating a urinal to the status of an art object, and, in the process, opening the floodgates to a whole host of less talented conceptual artists, but as his early Futurist paintings prove, he was also somebody who could daub quite well.
C.B.Liddell
Asahi Shimbun
18th February, 2005
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