Marcel Duchamps Influences on Modern Art

Marcel Duchamps Influences on Modern ArtMarcel Duchamps Influence on 20th/21st Century Art1 IntroductionThe influence of Duchamps nonion of readymade fine trickistic creation has had widespread and pro frame con nonations for the development of imposture in the 20th and 21st century. Firstly, Duchamps guile attempted to avoid many a(prenominal) of the traditions of machination at the term his exercising of readymades stigmatised the notion of the fine dodgeificeist as a condition. This radical redefinition of the constituent of mechanic informed time to come Conceptual artists in their attempts to relocate the boundaries that would define their theatrical spot. Duchamps role was precisely the opposite role as those artists concerned to the highest degree formulating an i channel form of inhering expression Duchamp was to a greater extent concerned just about the g every focalizenmental role of the artist and the institutions that serve to create art, quite an t han of the product of art itself. His readymade ca go for challenges many of these conceptions and institutions by sketch perplexity to the semipolitical and social executees behind the production of art. Secondly, Duchamps readymade incline also broadened what could be define as art. This placed art within a broader philosophical, geomorphological and lingual field of preaching in which the placement of art was much ephemeral. Ultimately, Duchamps project was to untie and disassemble art just this is linked to the post innovational notion that categories and objects do not possess any inherent gist, only unless contain the meanings that we ourselves assign to them. As such, Duchamps legacy in both a practical and a theoretical and philosophical sense has served to inform cultural and tasty debate throughout the 20th century, from Jasper conjuring tricks, to bulk art, performance art and other forms of avant-garde art that challenge the vestigial principles behi nd delicate production.Duchamps readymade has left a profound legacy across the board of contemporary art for a issue forth of reasons. Responses to the readymade and the challenge that it poses for a redefined art come apartd from the artefact are widespread. Firstly, the elevation of a readymade sketch of art alters the role of the artist in the production process Buchloh comments that the extent of Duchamps influence on art feces be answered by responding to three particular points for discussion. Firstly, he suggests that Duchamps influence can be seen in how the specific forms of how traditional forms of mark-making can be displaced by an exclusively photographic or textual operation of recording and documentation (Buskirk Nixon, 205). The impact of this method is to erode and to redefine the role of artist. Whereas we can learn that the classical and modernist form of the artist was to present us with a version of reality authenticated by the presence of the artist and the subjective esthetical rules that made that artist good or bad, Duchamps readymade march, namely The jet-propelled plane, challenges this access code by stressing the role of the artist as a collector and an assembler rather than as a creator. Beca practice it is obvious that Duchamps Fountain would not be considered a perish of art if it were presented to us in a lavatory, Duchamp highlights and challenges the prejudices inherent to artistic production namely, the traditional methods for artistic production and for mark-making are redefined and with it, the artist. Of course, this implication has had a profound impact on the development of 20th and 21st century art, from Jasper Johns flags to Warhols pop art, and has served to change the material conditions behind the production of art. The mechanistic connotations invoked by Duchamp and his readymade radically challenges and redefines the aesthetic palette available to artists Duchamps influence was to challenge the subje ctive aesthetic of artistic production Duchamps systemic use of a readymade on the unmatchable pass by broadens the philosophical and conceptual buns for art production while on the other hand exposing the fallacies of art production in its much traditional sense. Of course, the impacts of this challenge exhaust served to inform critical debate about the role of the artist in art ever since.2 Readymades In Advance of The Broken Arm, Trebuchet (Trap), Hat Rack, Bicycle Wheel, bottleful Dryer, Air de Paris (400 words)The elevation of a common object to the level of a work of art did not consist in classicly choosing and signing it. It implied following a set of four rules de-contextualisation, titling, hold in the frequency of the act and, the most esoteric of all, the necessity of a rendez-vous the meeting of the artist and the object (Schwarz, 126).Duchamps readymade also served to interrogate the principles by which we define objects themselves because Duchamps readymade work inherently interrogates the status of objects by ever-changing their relation to one- some other, it can be asserted that Duchamps project was to challenge how categories and objects are defined by their intrinsic properties rather than by their relationship to their broader environment.Buchloh points out that Duchamp facilitated the radical dismantling of all traditional definitions of objects and categories the dematerialisation of the work of art, as Lucy Lippard called it and its transfer onto the linguistic, the photographic, and the site-specific operations within which Conceptual art was defined (Buskirk Nixon, 205). Of course, the linguistic and structural properties of Duchamps readymade serves to interrogate and dismantle the traditional role of artist. It also broadens the scope and the context of art itself. However, perhaps more than significantly, the nature of Duchamps readymade does not allow for a particularly easy redefinition of arts aesthetic role. For example, if it is asserted that Duchamps role was to reposition items of artistic worth and to place them into the political space of a gallery, this highlights the political rather than the aesthetic role of the gallery and the artist in measuring stick items of subjective worth. In addition, Duchamps process of selection is also tellingThe great problem was the act of selection. I had to make clean an object without it impressing me and, as far as possible, without the least intervention of any idea or mite of aesthetic pleasure. It was necessary to reduce my voicel taste to zero. It is very difficult to select an object that has short no interest for us not only the day we pick it exclusively which never entrust and which, finally, can never have the possibility of becoming beautiful, pretty, agreeable or undeserving (Paz, 88).Duchamps aim, therefore, was to divorce art from its meanings and from the methods of legal opinion that are usually assigned to it. His desire to locate an object that had absolutely no interest whatsoever highlights both his desire to challenge the centrality of the artistic object, and also helps us to trace his legacy through what can be construed as an attempt to apply Duchamps philosophical theory on locating a work of art that can never be beautiful, pretty, agreeable or ugly, and the inevitable failure entrenched within the politics of the readymade despite Duchamps intention to create art that did not have any meaning, the assignation of meaning to Duchamps readymades as a series of fetishised objects seemed inevitable and also influenced other Conceptual artists in their project to erode the stability and the legitimacy of the artefact via a number of room the fetishisation of art in late capitalism, for example, causes art to amass a capitalistic value regardless of whether the artist him or herself wishes for a value to be attached to it.Trebuchet a come on rack, which means a trap for small birds and is a pun on the phonetically identical trebucher, meaning to stumble over. (Schwarz 126-7).Section 3 Duchamp as Rrose Selavy (400 words)Duchamp and the pascal movement in general were concerned about elucidating through irony and humour the role of the artist in the production process. Although the concept of the readymade changed this role from that of creator to selector of appropriate whole shebang of art, the role and identity of the artist was questioned in a more exhaustively mocking way with his invention of his female alter-ego, Rrose Selavy, whom several work of art were ascribed to. Naumann (2008) suggests that the invention of Rrose Selavy served the grander purposes and concentrations of Duchamps work, whose interests and themes let in disguise, reflection and signature (70). Taken generally, the invention of an alter-ego who has as much artistic agency as the artist himself serves to obfuscate, delude and disorient the stunner of the art in itself the notion of disguise functions as a means of disrupting the traditional role of the artist as droll creator of the work in question. Rrose Selavy also has a performance aspect to it, which, among other things, helps to blur the boundaries amid the work of art and the artist himself.Along with this, Duchamps alter-ego also has obvious connotations through the paradigm of gender studies. The peculiarities of Rrose Selavys role is particularly gnarled concerning this. As swell up as satirising the role of artist, the construction of Rrose Selavy also expressed many of the reservations expressed by Duchamp about the increasingly blurred boundaries amidst gender. Hopkins (2008) argues that Duchamps views were deeply conservative regarding the growing concern over gender equality he was deeply wary of the growing autonomy and mannishness of contemporary liberated women. The evident preoccupation with gender indeterminacy became thematized conclusively in the photographs of his female alter ego Rrose S elavy (Hopkins, 81). But while Rrose Selavy can be read as a satire of the mannish women who had become increasingly empowered in 1920s France, the role of Selavy could also be seen as a satire of the traditional French aristocratical woman, whose conservative sensibilities are also mocked by Duchamps character.This problematic is also supported by the texts that a great deal anchored the print representations of Rrose Selavy. Litterature magazine tagged one of his portraits with the following sentence Here is the Domain of Rrose Selavy how arid it is how copious how joyous how sad (from Hopkins 2008, 87), which demonstrates warmth and empathy with Rrose Selavy rather than irony or satire. Hopkins adds that The Paris group may well have understood Duchamp to be killing off his old dry, dusty male persona and being reborn as Rrose (Eros). (Hopkins, 86-7).Section 4 Duchamps use of language, wordplay, puns, paradoxes and humour in his work Fresh Widow, Why Not Sneeze Rrose Selav y, L.H.O.O.Q., Ready Made Rectified (Wanted $2000 Reward) (400 words)Duchamps assault on the art establishments and its values was executed in a manner that used a great deal of wordplay, irony and often cryptic allusion to more salacious and scandalous depths. Fresh Widow, for example, features a play on the words for French Window and can be read, as Hopkins comments, as a salacious allusion to the knowledgeable availability of bereaved women in Paris after the war. Other puns assist in denigrating the stature of the traditional artistic canon by anchoring them in a completely polar, and somewhat lewder context. This amorousness is exemplified by Duchamps famous work, L. H. O. O. Q.. Mundy (2008) suggests that humour and eroticism were tonality components to this Dada aesthetic, as Duchamp reinvented himself as a woman, disfigured a Mona Lisa with a moustache and printed underneath the letters L. H. O. O. Q. which, in French when pronounced phonetically translates as she has a hot arse. The intention of this clearly stems from an attempt to intentionally sabotage whole flora treated with reverence by the establishments at the time by using sexual innuendo and wordplay. In addition, the linguistic addition fleets assist to what exists outside of Da Vincis original framing, perhaps drawing guardianship to extraneous factors in artistic production and reproduction that cannot be framed as easily.In many respects, the titles of Duchamps full treatment have almost as great a importee as the works themselves Mundy (2008) comments that this focus intentionally blurs the boundaries amid traditional points of anchorage in the artistic production process The title-cum-impossible-question of another readymade, Why Not Sneeze Selavy?, posits unfathomable relationships surrounded by objective reality and subjective intentionality (35). Paradox between different elements of the sculpture are brought into question and serve to defy simple, certain interpretat ion.Duchamps famous readymade The Fountain challenges the utilitarian role of the urinal by placing the signature horizontally rather than vertically, thus metamorphosing the work into a prepare of art by defying its utilitarian purpose. For de Duve, the challenge of Duchamps legacy is, in part, linguistic I went sequent for what I think to be the heart of the issue, namely the status of the sentence this is art. It entails no definition or redefinition whatsoever, neither of this, nor of art. To take a shortcut, Id say it is the modern formula for the aesthetic judgement (213). Because Duchamp primarily and explicitly asserts that his fountain is art because it is socially defined as such (by its location, its reception etc.), he places art within an unfamiliar field of discourse namely that, anything can be seen as art providing it is anchored by the notion that what is being done is art. As such, Duchamps interrogates and problematizes any objective qualities that may have pre viously been considered artistic by nature. Of course, this has impacted significantly on conceptual and avant-garde art throughout the 20th century and into the 21st.His work Ready Made Rectified utilises Rrose Selavy by juxtaposing his own portrait with a wanted poster, on the one hand emphasising his role as enfant terrible of the artistic establishment and drawing ironical attention to the fallacious nature of the spectacle in itself. Humour and irony is ever so used to lie in wait these central paradoxes and to create a detachment between the various angles that are interrogated by these pieces. Mundy (2008) suggests that, for Duchamp, humour is always of a tragic nature. Humour signals a total independence of mind and is, essentially, a revolt of the timbre and of the unconscious over against the conditioning of life and society. Humour has an endless power to challenge and provoke. It is a factor of opposition, marvellously subversive in so far as it establishes a victor y of the pleasure principle over the reality principle. (35).Section 5 Duchamps work with Chance lead Standard Stoppages (400 words)Duchamp also interrogates the place of art in society by using detect operations. Three Standard Stoppages provides an example of this strategy, and again serves to undermine and interrogate the role of artist in the production process, as well as interrogating a number of other devices and standards. Firstly, Three Standard Stoppages draws attention to the authority of standardised meters. Judovitz (1995) suggests that, because the work is on the one hand based on standardised measurement, but on the other hand does not arrive consistent results, undermines the legitimacy of universal systems of measurement, which has metaphorical connotations for the way in which value judgements are made it demonstrates the credit entry that the meter itself as a unit of length is generated through approximation the straightening out, as it were, of a slew meridi an. Duchamp sets the security guard straight by graphically showing that the authority of the meter as a measuring device relies upon distortions that he corrects through chance operations (Judovitz 1995, 48).In addition, the work also interrogates notions of artistic authority Three Standard Stoppages puts into question the voluntaristic and intentional logic that defines the creative act and the identity of the artist. To assume chance as a locus for production is to understand causality itself not as an origin but as a productive event, whose plasticity can redefine the notion of artistic creativity (Judovitz 1995, 49). The workout of chance, therefore, metaphorically serves to emphasise the temporal element of artistic production the traditional role of the artist as an objective, isolated producer of universal and timeless works is draw into question by these chance operations. As such, the prior legitimacy of artistic creativity being equated to notions of timelessness are jeopardized.Section 6 Duchamp (or more accurately his alter-ego Rrose Selavy) The putting green Box the use of Photo automatic Printing, instead of the usual autographic printing methods (400 words)The use of unusual printing methods in Duchamps The Green Box draws significant attention to the traditional methods associated with machinelike reproduction of works of art. The mechanical drawings of The Green Box, combined with the intentionally disruptive printing methods utilised draw attention to the very process of printing and the relationship between mass production techniques and the innately singular nature of hand-made works of art. Judovitz suggests that Duchamps use of mechanical drawing does not base itself around animal(prenominal) or scientific principles. Instead, they represent a symbolic way of explaining, one that privileges the logic of the machine, only to go bad its ironic underpinnings (Judovitz 1995, 58). Significantly, the use of photomechanical printing fu rther emphasises the problematic nature of these drawings which, on the one hand aesthetically reproduce the optic methods of mechanical drawing, while on the other hand is representative of a more outlandish, pseudoscientific principle that disrupts the legitimacy of the rubric, codes and language used to construct such mechanical, scientific devices. The use of photomechanical technology to construct these prints also draws attention to the more invisible process of production, rather than to the mere surface of the production itself.The legacy of Duchamps mixing and matching of various print processes has been widespread, both in terms of its philosophical qualities (questioning the authority of a case-by-case method of printing, and of the singular importance of a single work of art) and also its more technical aspects. Of course, this interrogation of the notion of artistic originality can be found in pop art, that reconciled notions of art, commerce and mass production in th e generation of works of art that were no more artistically meaningful (meaningful in the traditional sense) than mass produced wallpaper or a newspaper advertisement. Thirkell (2005) comments that Duchamps questioning of the notion of originality has also had a profound influence on modern print, ultimately triggering the revolution in print expression exemplified by photomechanically driven vehicle of Pop Art. The Green Box, therefore, in its playfulness with printing processes would prove influential in the emerging debate surrounding artistic legitimacy, authority and originality.Section 7 Duchamps work in Optics in Motion Rotary Demisphere, Rotaryrelease (400 words)many of Duchamps optical works focussed on optical john and the ambiguity of depth perception. His Rotoreliefs in particular create the illusion of depth and draw attention to the role of the artist as a magician or trickster. In addition, many of these works also had erotic connotations, as the voyeuristic proclivi ties of the viewer of the art are made explicit by overt and metaphorical sexualised case. Mundy (2008) comments that the Rotoreliefs and their disorientating movement echoes that of eroticism the visual sensation of movement back and forth had an erotic undertone (31). This work in optics was also drawn from Picabias optical work, which was more overtly eroticised (Octophone II, for example). This draws attention to the innately subjective nature of sexualised imagery, and suggests that sexual content somehow alters and transfigures the technical quality of art in itself by suggesting that sexuality is in itself a subjective illusion, Duchamp erodes the marge that is arbitrarily placed between the art and the consumer of the artistic product. Mundy suggests that he took the eroticisation of vision the power of the corporate and mental responses to control the interpretation of what is seen to new heights (31). This fragmentation of the process of interpretation serves metaphor ically to stumble the subjective, sensual feelings of the viewer of the art, who interprets the illusion as though is was not illusory. The use of optical illusion questions the boundary between what is real and what is illusory, as the eyes of the viewer effectively trick the viewer into perceiving the illusion as real.Perspective and depth and its illusory nature is made explicit by Duchamps works in optics. In Hand Stereoscopy, special glasses are required to give the work a level of depth, and also equates the use of colour and the use of depth Judovitz comments that these dots of pigment are the projection of the perspectival (mathematical) principles underlying optics (138-9). In addition, the drawing together of depth illusions and colour serves to blur and make explicit the relationship between these technical attributes of the artistic product itself as Duchamp himself suggests, perspective resembles color (Sanouillet Peterson 1973, 87).Section 8 Duchamps work influencing artistsCornell Duchamps work With Hidden folie influenced Cornells Untitled (Rattle and Music Box) Cornells locker of innate History (Object) (one of the bottles containing shards of glass and labelled Methode de M. Duchamp) alludes to Duchamps work The Large Glass. Box Assemblages have become the process for Cornells entire oeuvre. (400 words)The legacy of Duchamps work has been significant, as many artists serve to draw attention (either explicit attention or implicit, coded reference) to the themes and codes of Duchamps disruptive oeuvre. Perhaps the most explicit reference to Duchamps legacy can be found in the work of Cornell, whose works drew instantly from Duchamp and utilised much of his iconography. In particular, his Untitled works, such as Mona Lisa, Rattle and Music Box serve to use imagery popularised by Duchamp in the former piece, the Mona Lisa in placed in a significantly different context, perhaps drawing more attention to Duchamps Mona Lisa of L. H. O. O. Q. t han it does the original. The repetition of this imagery also draws attention to the mechanical processes of production that Duchamp used to interrogate the notion of the artist as a producer of singular works of art.Cornells use of readymade works can also be traced back directly to the influence of Duchamp. His Cabinet of Natural History, for example, is an assemblage of various found pieces of art placed in a glass cabinet. chemist bottles, maps and photographs are recontextualised in a manner thematically similar to Duchamp. In addition, Duchamp is also referenced directly, as if to interrogate further the concept of artistic authority and originality Kosinski (2006) notes that one bottle, containing shards of glass and labelled Methode de M. Duchomp alludes to Duchamps key work, the Large Glass while playfully toying with the correct pronunciation of his French name (39). The significance of Duchamp to Cornell is made explicit by the direct reference he makes to Duchamps legacy . In addition, his use of delivery and meticulous, scientific rigour echoes the attention to detail of Duchamps scientific works. Thirdly, Cornell uses linguistic anchorage, wordplay and the discrepancy between speech and writing (via the use of puns and misspellings) in a manner that echoes Duchamps work that places classical works of antiquity within a surprising new context.Section 9 Duchamps work influencing artists Johns Johns work Device makes reference to diagrams and sketches found in Duchamps Green Box. Johns acknowledged the powerful provocation of the readymade in his work Thoughts on Duchamps, published in1969 in Art in America. (400 words)Duchamps aesthetic statements on the role of artist was explored in an aesthetic sense by artists such as Jasper Johns, whose use of flags and collage sought-after(a) to redefine what was considered as authentic art, Duchamps legacy also permeates into more conceptual fields. Buchloh comments that the legacy of Duchamp was change fro m its first level of reception in the work of Jasper Johns to the second level in Morris what one business leader call the semio arranged, or the structural / linguistic axis (205). The effect of Duchamp on Jasper Johns is, by Johns own admission, significant. Again, Johns utilises Duchamps iconography and reformulates classical imagery in a manner that echoes Duchamps original idea to redefine the role of the Mona Lisa. For example, in Johns ambitious work The Seasons, explicit attention is drawn to the figure of the Mona Lisa in the first of the four paintings. Kosinski comments that irony is utilised in a manner that resembles the work of Duchamp himself The overshadow in each dialog box of The Seasons is Johns himself, melancholic perhaps and surely self referential, although it is executed after a drawing of his cast shadow that was executed by someone else. This game of ironic distance is surely rooted in Duchamps play with shadow portraits (32). This drawing of attention a way from the subject and onto peripheral objects surrounding the subject draws directly from Duchamps attempts to raise speculation about the single classical subject of painting. In addition, the dual report of these pieces raises questions about artistic integrity in a manner similar to Duchamp.Section 10 Duchamps work influencing artists Rauschenberg Duchamps influence is present in Rauschenbergs boxes.He was influenced by With Hidden Noise for his work Music Box (Elemental Sculpture). (400 words) Thirdly, Duchamps legacy is explicitly referenced in the works of Rauschenberg, which breast at the different ways in which the relationship between artistic modes of production and the increasingly troubled and disturbed relationship between artist and viewer. Rauschenbergs Music Box (Elemental Sculpture), for instance, bears significant resemblance to Duchamps readymade With Hidden Noise, which demands the viewer to activate the piece in order for it to make a sound. The challenge that this poses for the viewer is similar to that of Rauschenberg Unwieldy, the box demands the physical engagement of the spectator-turned-performer, and the central issue is not the mysterious hidden object, but rather the potential sound itself, and the implied demands on the viewer to wrestle with the cumbersome crate (Kosinski 2006, 19). The boxes that demand the attention of the viewer, and disturb the cherished role and piece of the artistic piece disturbs and challenges the traditionally voyeuristic relationship between the artist and the work in question. In addition, Rauschenbergs boxes are more expansive in their approach to the role of art in the society that surrounds them in a manner similar to Duchamps readymades, Rauschenberg takes directly from the society that surrounds it rather than approaching the production of art in a purely creative sense. Of course, this draws significantly upon the thematic content of Duchamps legacy, and draws explicit attention to the pa radoxes and the frustrations that both artists had with the traditionally impotent role of art regarding the broader society that served to pigeonhole it.Rauschenbergs process, while drawing upon Duchamps legacy, serves to reappropriate many of its central motifs and preoccupations in a manner that distinguishes it from the work of Cornell and Johns. While both Cornell and Rauschenberg utilised boxes in a manner that drew upon the work of Duchamp to frame its preoccupations, the nature and the content of these boxes were very different in their overall thematic context Cornells boxes are highly refined and rich in their variety of cultural allusion. Kosinski (2006, 44) comments Rauschenbergs early boxes, though small, are cruder, atavistic and dangerous rather than delightful (44). As such Rauschenberg can be seen as taking a specific element of Duchamps thematic approach to readymade art and pushing it to its logical conclusion his work is more confrontation than Cornell, who sough t to beautify and protect his modified readymades by placing them in a more aesthetically pleasing context, surrounding them in glass, etc. Rauschenbergs work, by contrast, offers a more directly political assault on the establishment ethics at the time, drawing more upon Duchamps concept of the readymade as junk from life (Kosinski 2006, 46).Section 11 Duchamps work influencing artists Robert Morris Morriss work Mirrored Cubes is influenced by Duchamps Green Box. Morriss Three Rulers was influenced by Duchamps Three Stoppages. (400 words)The work of Robert Morris is also framed significantly by the central paradoxes opened up by dada and by Duchamp in particular. Its attention, according to Benjamin Buchlow, is secondary to the primary reception in the artists set forth above. Here, the response to Duchamps work is based on what one might call the semiological, or the structural / linguistic axis (Buskirk and Nixon, 205). By this, Buchlow suggests that Morriss Cardfile piece in pa rticular draws attention to these categories of meaning regarding the emphasis between artistic subjectivity and anonymity. The development of Conceptual art in America, which is epitomised by Morriss problematic work which draws attention to notions of artistic validity and of the tension between this structural and linguistic axis, is heavily indebted(predicate) to the particular tensions opened up by Duchamp and his technical works which oriented itself around an exploration of the role of subjectivity in the artist. While this is drawn attention to, it is significant to note that the problematic surrounding artistic subjectivity in a given artistic piece continues to remain prevalent even in Morriss deeply deconstructive and polymorphous work. Alberro comments that Behind the Duchamp / Morris legacy I always see the figure of the artist the artist / agent is always there. Its there in both Duchamp and Morris, even in the Cardfile where hes trying to remove it (209). Thus, the d rawing of attention to the purely linguistic sphere in Morriss work equates to Duchamps utilisation of processes of artistic production that were traditionally outside of the traditional camp of visual, plastic art production. Like the readymades, Morriss Cardfile is conceptual as it draws explicit attention to its own inherent aesthetic meaninglessness. It does not connote anything by itself rather, it is defined by its context as an exhibition piece. In addition, its purely linguistic role serves to disturb the previous aesthetic determinants of giving a piece artistic value as such.The role of artist in Duchamps readymade has been transfigured in a radical way into a political and social figure namely, he is not defined by the artwork that he / she produces, but is defined by his / her position within the political space offered this is explored by conceptual artists such as Robert Morris and in performance art where the artist does not decide to entrench himself in the dogmas of an accepted aesthetic tradition, and does not distance himself fro