Duchamp, 100 Years Later

I like this quote by Duchamp:

" The work of art is always based on the two poles of the onlooker and the maker, and the spark that comes from that bipolar action gives birth to something - like electricity. But the onlooker has the last word, and it is always posterity that makes the masterpiece. The artist should not concern himself with this, because it has nothing to do with him."

I've viewed many traditional and conceptual works of art that don't
generate a spark, but to me, Duchamp's painting, after 100 years, still has "electricity".

I agree -- it's a tough act to follow. Like I referenced earlier, only Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg took up the gauntlet with any major success.
I don't believe Warhol had anything to do with any of Duchamp's ideas - pop art was always a reactionary movement to abstractions.

Pop art in Britain predated the American pop art, but Warhol is marked by an influence of artists of 1920's America -- Gerald Murphy, Charles Demuth and Stuart Davis. It also came out of advertising art, which Warhol was schooled in, and the only concept that came out of abstract expressionism was the over-scaled size of the images.

The entire Dada art movement was also an influence but Duchamp could never be pigeonholed into any one art movement. He was unique onto himself, even creating what could be perceived as early Op Art.

As always, LW, when it comes to knowledge of art history I defer to you. Did deKooning--a truly "electrifying" master of the over-scaled size of imagery--also have training in "commercial" art methods?

And, of course, Shepaints, I've always acknowledged the bipolar nature of the aesthetic experience: it takes BOTH the creativity of the artist AND the viewer.

LW, I note that Duchamp used a variety of self generated images in his last painting for his sister, and he also included a hand painted by someone else.... a sign painter. I wonder whether he influenced Warhol by removing "the hand of the artist" and predated Warhol's later employment of assistants to execute his work?

The "assistant" dilemma has always been debated, especially since we know Rafael used several assistant or protege painters to execute his murals. The Vasarely Institute in Paris is the still operating studio where his assistants worked on his canvasses and, of course, on the silk screens. It's more prevalent than one thinks. De Chirico would fill an order for nearly an exact replica of a painting if paid for it. All sorts of practices to debate.

Warhol's The Factory was in line with the concept of Pop Art as his images were produced by photographic enlargements onto photosensitive coatings on canvas. I like a lot of Warhol, especially the Chairman Mao and the Eletric Chair series, both which became limited edition silkscreens.

I think including a sign painters work is more Johns and Rauschenberg than Warhol. Rauschenberg especially for his invention of the acid extraction process which transferred newspaper and magazine images to his canvasses.

Duchamp's intellectual wit is extremely important -- he was, after all, the Voltaire of painters. The humor is an emotion. I still will get a mental chuckle upon viewing his Mona Lisa, the urinal and the bicycle wheel. A wheel is a wheel is a wheel. Some visual general semantics going on there!

He started off pretty much like Rauschenberg and Johns who had formed an entity which provided shop window decoration! I think Johns' "White Flag" was in Bloomingdale's window at one time. Now it's worth, say, $ 30M?

DeKooning painted canvas to order for interior designers for several years, matching the colors for the project!

And was the window decoration for department stores the beginning of installations?

It seems so self-evident, but apparently it isn't if Scruton's article is any indication. No wonder he hates Duchamp.

LW, thank you for the historical explanation re: assistants. I wonder if Duchamp's last prophetic painting (incorporating the hand executed by a hired sign painter) marks the first time a commercially painted image was included in a "fine arts" painting. Can you think of this happening before?

Duchamp turned down a contract of US $10,000 per year to produce a
single painting a year. He must have been rich! This was back in the fifties! I note that he later made money off signed limited edition replicas of his readymades!

Scruton is writing in a right-wing periodical and those people just generally hate any modern art past Van Gogh. It's not within their understanding.

I think the visual arts are difficult to write about -- everything either turns into artspeak or diatribes like this one. The old adage the beauty is in in eye of the beholder is true. There hasn't been one person I've known, skilled at writing or speaking, or not, who can explain their reaction to any one painting. Some of them just make themselves look silly. Something like this writer who obviously has only passing interest in art and not much knowledge.

Some conceptual art I've seen in museums or the upscale galleries is successful even with an influence of Duchamp. So the writer picks out some examples which obtained publicity for one reason or another and decides that he's an art historian and critics, consequently thinking he has all the answers. I presume since his is a right winger that all this "bad" art is the work of the devil.

On Abuzz, I once started at discussion on what artist had influenced today's art more than any other. The three I put into the title were Picasso, Hoffman and Duchamp. The final conclusion was between Duchamp and Hoffman, especially with the return of pure abstractionism looming on the horizon. Pop art has extended itself out to Haring, Scharf and Greenblatt even though there was nothing really completely original about cartoon/graffiti art. Basquit, before his death, had collaborated with Warhol and Haring had done projects like a wall where he painting in the black outlines and children filled in the colors.

It's interesting that such a talented painter was content to abandon painting in order to pursue other intellectual/aesthetic interests. I wonder what direction painting would have taken had Duchamp decided to contribute to its history, instead of dismantling it!

Found by pure chance this e-resource - Debating American Modernism, Stieglitz, Duchamp, and the New York Avant-Garde (American Federation of Arts) - which is a

Companion to an exhibit of works by "artists associated with American photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) and French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) [who] spurred the development of modern art in the United States between 1915 and 1929." Features an introductory essay, an illustrated chronology (1902-1929), a student guide (discussing items such as Duchamp's "Fountain," a urinal), classroom activities, and bibliography and links.

Thanks, Walter -- that's a great link to an academic overview of modern art. In America, you have to begin with Armory Show and it helps to have some art history knowledge of Cezanne and the artists who began to drift away from strict realism. Duchamp didn't simply break one or two of the rules, he broke them all. After all, those rules were at the the time academic and critical rules for drawing and painting. Change can be shocking and jar the senses but what if it is kept in check and isn't allowed to happen? Seems like Stalinist Russia, doesn't it? Or Nazi Germany?