Marcel Duchamp (1887 - 1968)

The Father of Post-Modernism

As the father of Post-modernism, Duchamp could be referred to as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He helped trigger the American move from realism to abstraction, pioneered the concept of changing context to make art out of everything and anything, and used lengthy sentences to explain abstracted forms in a linguistic language. Ironically, he arguably wasn’t really a born artist at all. His output was very low in the brief career that he quit in 1923 to play chess. Additionally, much of his most famous pieces seemed more of a joke for his own entertainment.

His first seminal piece was Nude Descending Down the Staircase, 1912, which was in a vague Cubist style. In Europe, he tried to enter a version of it in a Cubist exhibition, but was refused because organisers said nudes don't descend down stairs, they recline in chairs. Duchamp’s brothers suggested he change the name, but he simply collected his painting and took it home. Of the incident, Duchamp recalled,

"I said nothing to my brothers. But I went immediately to the show and took my painting home in a taxi. It was really a turning point in my life, I can assure you. I saw that I would not be very much interested in groups after that."

Duchamp later exhibited Nude Descending Down the Staircase No 2 in the American Armoury Show of 1913, where the American media targeted it for special ridicule. Cartoonists caricatured it as resembling a cascade of people falling down the stairs. Critics said it was a "collection of saddlebags" and that viewers would have to eat "three Welsh rarebits and sniff cocaine" to understand it.

Ironically, the ridicule made a name out of Duchamp and ensured his prosperity as an artist. As American artists followed the European lead towards abstraction, they elevated Duchamp as a kind of artistic hero. So much so, when Duchamp moved to America, he was greeted on the dock by the excited American press. It seemed that in ridicule, Duchamp found a celebrity status that art marketers the world over sought to emulate for the next century.

Nude Descending Down the Staircase No 2 - 1912

Duchamp’s next seminal work revolved around his "readymades." Duchamp developed an idea that everything was potentially art and an artist merely needed to be able to identify it and put it in the gallery. Once in the gallery, the context would ensure that the readymade would serve its artistic role. Duchamp mischievously applied his concept in 1917 when he entered his work Fountain in an exhibition for the Society of Independent Artists - a society he helped create. Fountain was a urinal signed with the name R. Mutt. By putting the urinal in a gallery, the audience was able to see a urinal in a new light. Instead of being a urinal, it was an application of advanced artistic concept. (Perhaps it was also a statement that art was something to be pissed on.)

Although the readymades were seminal pieces of art, it is also possible that they were jokes designed to stop artists taking themselves too seriously. When he entered Fountain in the exhibition, he did so under the false name of R.Mutt. Organisers subsequently refused to exhibit it. Under the alias of R.Mutt, Duchamp protested Fountain’s exclusion and argued that it was worthy of respect because the artist had selected it. In his own words,

"Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that the useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view - created a new thought for that object."

Fountain (1917)

Perhaps Duchamp was seeking some controversy, but he was also undermining the face of key figures in the art world. Either way, he seemed to be enjoying himself, he gained attention and he forced other artists to reconsider their conceptions of what art actually was. Italian artist Piero Manzoni reworked the idea to make Artist Shit. American printmaker Andy Warhol also copied the idea of changing context to make art by searching the media for iconic imagery, signing it and then putting it in a gallery. In a nutshell, Duchamp pioneered the idea of changing context to make art.

Duchamp’s third seminal piece was L.H.O.O.Q (1919), better known as a print of the Mona Lisa with a moustache drawn on it. The letters were an acronym for She’s Got a Hot Arse (in French.) Some have interpreted Duchamp’s act of irrelevance to iconic imagery as a further example of his desire for artists not to take themselves or their work too seriously. The titling of the work has been interpreted as a joke about Leonardo Da Vinci’s perceived homosexuality.  Later Duchamp signed an unaltered print and subtitled it with "rasee", which was French for shaved.

L.H.O.O.Q (1919)

Duchamp's final seminal work was his Large Glass, or Bride Striped Naked by her Bachelors, Even (1915-1923). More than 100 years of Modernist exploration, or Post-modernist assertion, has yet to produce a work that is in anyway comparable in conception or execution. In the top section, a bride, depicted as an internal combustion engine powered by a "reservoir of love gasoline", perpetually disrobes herself. Floating across the top of the screen is the bride's "cinematic blossoming" at the moment she is stripped bare. The blossuming is the "sum total of her splendid vibrations." In the blossuming are three square windows, the draft pistons, which are used to telegraph commands. In the bottom section, various men, depicted as vocational roles for which there is no female equivalent (postman, priest, busboy etc), indicate their desire by making the chocolate grinder turn. Fullfillment never takes place, leaving the bride unravished and forever between desire and possession.

Duchamp planned for the Large Glass to be explained via a collection of notes that were scrambled and stored in the Green Box. In a sense, the Green Box acts as an incoherent artist statement that explains the imagery like an instruction manual, but also a manual that was totally confused.

If there was a legacy of his Large Glass it was that it became acceptable to create abstract imagery and then explain it with words. Today, art institutions around the world don’t actually assess the visual language itself, they assess the words that the student uses to describe the visual language. Likewise, Abstract Expressionist artists like Mark Rothko painted coloured shapes and then used words to argue that they were spiritual experiences for those who were open to their power.

Duchamp worked on his Large Glass from the start of the American phase of his career in 1915 to its end in 1923. During its construction, it gained a kind of mythical quality as other artists expected to see a masterpiece that would echo through the ages when unveiled. However, Duchamp grew bored with it. The original commisioner sold it on, and when he delivered it to its new owner, it was unfinished. Once unveiled at the Brooklyn Museum, it proved to be underwhelming. It was returned to its owner and remained in a closed carton in her house for the next 13 years. When again opened in 1936, it was found to have been smashed. Duchamp put it back together, and sealed it between two other planes of glass, but was said to do so with casual indifference to its destruction.

Bride Striped Naked by her Bachelors, Even (1915-1923)

Although Duchamp was one of the 20th century’s most influential artists, arguably he was more of a comedian than an artist. Like a comedian, he was adept at finding the inconsistencies of others and making jokes about them. Naturally, as a man from a family of artists who mixed with other artists, the subjects of his jokes were artists. Sometimes he made jokes with words, sometimes by satirical assimilation, and sometimes by taking the piss out of iconic imagery. If art stopped being fun he wouldn’t do it. He said he never painted more than two hours a day, and after an extremely brief career, gave up creating all together and just played chess.

There are two possible explanations for the immense influence that he had. The first was that by subverting art and artists, he helped artists focus on inconsistencies within the art world, which in turn fostered a revolution in art. Other artists were too intent on maintaining strong relationships in art groups to ever dare find faults or inconsistencies in what the group was doing. In other words, they were too passive and conformist to ever be revolutionaries. The second explanation is that the Post-modern art that Duchamp paved the way for was conducive to abuses of power. The idea of changing context to make art made it possible for everyone to be a great artist. Likewise, egalitarian mantras about flattening art made all art equal, but some artists more equal than others. This was useful for private galleries who wanted to use marketing to make the name of artists. For art buyers, all that really mattered was that the art was recognisable. It didn’t need to be good or widely celebrated. Public indignation helped recognisability while being in the tradition of Duchamp gave credibility. Post-modernist ideology was also useful for art bureaucracies who didn’t want to have to be accountable for favouring their mates when deciding upon residencies, grants, studios and acquisitions. Arguing that public opinion didn’t matter and art couldn’t be assessed objectively helped escape such accountability.

It should be stressed that Duchamp neither encouraged such abuses of power nor benefitted from them. He never tried to sell his Readymades nor did he receive art grants from a public service bureaucracy. If he had continued to practice into the Post-modernist era there is little doubt he would have taken the piss out of it with as much gusto as he did out of Modernism. For Duchamp, no art was sacred, not even his own.