first november essay
first november essay Duchamp and the Ready-Made
Octavio Paz speaks of "ready-mades" as an-artistic; works of art whose "interest is not plastic but critical or philosophical."[1] If we accept this, and there is plenty of support in Duchamp's own writings for accepting this, we quickly fall into the realm of contradiction. That a work of art might not be plastic, but rather something almost outside, over or past "art," that it be an exploration, not of itself (its processes and material), but of an intellectual struggle to discover the place and value of art, all of this places the "ready-made" within a much larger context than a mere work. Or, it illustrates how there is no such thing as 'mere work.' Duchamp would seem to be struggling to get to the basis which creates our interest (a profound connection) in art in the first case. Works, by being 'interesting' or meaningful, stand between our awareness and its anihilation. They, by definition, call their own existence into question. What then makes "ready-mades" of value any more than any other work: industrial products or art works for example? Are "ready-mades" still of value, or were they wholely exhausted within their own history?
Questions of value are not only philosophical, they involve the nature of our consumption of art. This consumption is a fundamentally social act. Art is an exchange between artist and observer. But what are the conditions for success? Is it true that to come away from a painting with something meaningful (of sense) requires that we first know everything possible about who created it? Surely, the social connection which has an artwork at its intersection relies on something deeper, something fundamentally shared by all, something which does not require a literary accompaniment. It only adds to the rigour of the "ready-made" that it is offered as intellectual work, while the material object which houses the effort only serves to keep it opaque.
The desire is to ask Duchamp for an explanation...the whole point of the work is strengthened by his denial to give an answer...or to give an non-answer: 'I don't know, I just felt like it.' Just because he plays his game in the gallery of the mind does not mean that Duchamp is playing a discursive game. He is producing art about art, using our understanding of the objective as the material he manipulates. It is not the object which is of interest, but our relation to it and the context in which it is placed. The "ready-made" attains its value from the force it exerts on us to reassess our perception of our world. This is an act of reconnection to the fundamentals of our existence. After all, perception, as a connection between the experiencing subject and its forever distanced object, is the embodiment of the ambiguities of epistemological desire and the universe's refusal to answer. But, why do we need to be reconnected in this way. Art, like all human activity aimed at awareness, is prone to the dulling effects of habit and repitition. To overcome this we need to continually re-invent our cultural productions, to continually seek newness.
The "ready-made" attempts to resusitate the habitual observer by criticizing the formulaic, the systematic, the rational (as assumed to be), and the prejudicially accepted canons of taste. The new is placed within the context of the habitually old in order to frustrate and contradict it. This is not done with any desire to progress beyond the old. There is no progress here, just expression. The role of the "ready-made" is to keep life going...to keep art and our experience of it alive in our experience of reality. The "ready-made" is a metaphysical attitude turned into art through a play within the space which ties art to its very material incarnation. The physical is not the endpoint of the work of art. Against it resides something other (an-aesthetically) which removes us from the sensual influence of what is at first hand, spatially and temporally. The expression contradicts itself in order to avoid conforming to any preconception, to get away from the taste developed to quiet our dissatisfaction with our limited awareness. Freedom from ourselves is the value found here. The "ready-made" interests us because it holds a mirror to the reality we too often ignore in our repetitive habitual lives.
[1] Octavio Paz, “The Ready-made,” in Marcel Duchamp in Perspective ed., Joseph Mashek (New York: Prentice Hall, 1975): 84.
Octavio Paz speaks of "ready-mades" as an-artistic; works of art whose "interest is not plastic but critical or philosophical."[1] If we accept this, and there is plenty of support in Duchamp's own writings for accepting this, we quickly fall into the realm of contradiction. That a work of art might not be plastic, but rather something almost outside, over or past "art," that it be an exploration, not of itself (its processes and material), but of an intellectual struggle to discover the place and value of art, all of this places the "ready-made" within a much larger context than a mere work. Or, it illustrates how there is no such thing as 'mere work.' Duchamp would seem to be struggling to get to the basis which creates our interest (a profound connection) in art in the first case. Works, by being 'interesting' or meaningful, stand between our awareness and its anihilation. They, by definition, call their own existence into question. What then makes "ready-mades" of value any more than any other work: industrial products or art works for example? Are "ready-mades" still of value, or were they wholely exhausted within their own history?
Questions of value are not only philosophical, they involve the nature of our consumption of art. This consumption is a fundamentally social act. Art is an exchange between artist and observer. But what are the conditions for success? Is it true that to come away from a painting with something meaningful (of sense) requires that we first know everything possible about who created it? Surely, the social connection which has an artwork at its intersection relies on something deeper, something fundamentally shared by all, something which does not require a literary accompaniment. It only adds to the rigour of the "ready-made" that it is offered as intellectual work, while the material object which houses the effort only serves to keep it opaque.
The desire is to ask Duchamp for an explanation...the whole point of the work is strengthened by his denial to give an answer...or to give an non-answer: 'I don't know, I just felt like it.' Just because he plays his game in the gallery of the mind does not mean that Duchamp is playing a discursive game. He is producing art about art, using our understanding of the objective as the material he manipulates. It is not the object which is of interest, but our relation to it and the context in which it is placed. The "ready-made" attains its value from the force it exerts on us to reassess our perception of our world. This is an act of reconnection to the fundamentals of our existence. After all, perception, as a connection between the experiencing subject and its forever distanced object, is the embodiment of the ambiguities of epistemological desire and the universe's refusal to answer. But, why do we need to be reconnected in this way. Art, like all human activity aimed at awareness, is prone to the dulling effects of habit and repitition. To overcome this we need to continually re-invent our cultural productions, to continually seek newness.
The "ready-made" attempts to resusitate the habitual observer by criticizing the formulaic, the systematic, the rational (as assumed to be), and the prejudicially accepted canons of taste. The new is placed within the context of the habitually old in order to frustrate and contradict it. This is not done with any desire to progress beyond the old. There is no progress here, just expression. The role of the "ready-made" is to keep life going...to keep art and our experience of it alive in our experience of reality. The "ready-made" is a metaphysical attitude turned into art through a play within the space which ties art to its very material incarnation. The physical is not the endpoint of the work of art. Against it resides something other (an-aesthetically) which removes us from the sensual influence of what is at first hand, spatially and temporally. The expression contradicts itself in order to avoid conforming to any preconception, to get away from the taste developed to quiet our dissatisfaction with our limited awareness. Freedom from ourselves is the value found here. The "ready-made" interests us because it holds a mirror to the reality we too often ignore in our repetitive habitual lives.
[1] Octavio Paz, “The Ready-made,” in Marcel Duchamp in Perspective ed., Joseph Mashek (New York: Prentice Hall, 1975): 84.
posted by haro d' aires at 1:54 a.m.
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