DUCHAMP'S LEGACY

Duchamp's Legacy

Duchamp's Legacy

In 1963 the Pasadena Art Museum in California presented Marcel Duchamp's first retrospective exhibition. Organized by the young curator Walter Hopps, this exhibition introduced, for the fist time, Duchamp's works to the West Coast's spectators and artists. The exhibition space was designed according to themes based on Duchamp's works. His early Cubist-influenced paintings (including two versions of Nude Descending A Staircase, 1911-12) were shown in one room, and a replica of The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, 1915-23, was shown in another room with some of Duchamp's ready-mades (such as Fountain, Paris Air, and Traveler's Folding Item). The exhibition's announcement implicitly mentioned an ongoing Duchamp project (which was, in fact, Étant Donnés, Duchamp's famous posthumous work, revealed to the public after his death) but no evidence of this project was displayed at the exhibition.

A "Readymade" is an everyday object selected and designated as art. The name was coined by Marcel Duchamp. His first ready-made, "Bicycle Wheel" (1913), (www.artscienceresearchlab.org/articles/artnews.htm) consisting of a wheel mounted on a stool, was his way of protesting the excessive importance attached to works of art. By selecting mass-produced, commonplace objects, Duchamp attempted to destroy the notion of the uniqueness of the art object. These anti-aesthetic gestures made Duchamp one of the leading Dadaists, and his ready-made technique was adapted by such contemporary artists as Robert Rauschenburg, Andy Warhol, and Jasper Johns.

If you accept a readymade as an artwork, it means that you assume that the diverse traditional qualities of an artwork — such as contemplation, composition, manner, skill, style, expression, taste, beauty, etc. — suddenly become not relevant anymore.

In other words, since readymade is art, the concept of art is completely revolutionized. http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_2/Articles/obalk.html

That revolution has an author: Marcel Duchamp. And his historical and revolutionary readymades are all dated between 1913 and 1919.

First, Ramírez addresses the readymades and describes a "readymade" as a work of art that has been, prior to the artist's handling, "'already-made,' or previously produced. The artist does not create, in the traditional sense of the word, but chooses from among the objects of the industrial world or (to a lesser degree) the world of nature." Ramírez then summarizes Duchamp's readymades according to their "degree of rectification," the "complexity of the assemblage" and the "degree of necessity for manipulation [...] and structure." (2) Here, Ramírez tries to link the concept of the readymade to industrial production by highlighting the technical and material aspects of the readymade. On the other hand, he also suggests there is a sensual quality to the readymade. The form of the readymade renders its industrial counterpart an aesthetic sense, even an erotic one. Therefore, the readymade, for the author, presents us with a double character, showing us both industrial significance and erotic pleasure.

Such are in a few words the elements you can find in any recent history of art. It is on the base of this definition of readymades, that philosophers such as Dickie, Danto, de Duve, Genette and many others, have built ...