I, too, thought that the early paintings and drawings were the revelation of this show. That Duchamp was so skilled with a pen and paper was interesting to me. The paintings struck me as of a piece with his time in a fairly dull way. As if Gaugin had stayed home. Another thing that was interesting was that the readymades that were original still held power for me. Appolinaire Paints was one example, but With Hidden Noise is my favorite - the idea that there is something hidden in a work of art that even the artist cannot identify feels powerful to me.
On the other hand, the other reproductions of the other readymades - the urinal, the bottle racks - seemed antithetical to Duchamp's original sense of humor and spontaneity. Apparently it is not only the artist who gets to turn ordinary things around and say they are now art - the curator and the art dealer can do it to.
Thanks for the reply. I have a sneaking suspicion that any given work of modern art is a scam, even if I’m enjoying the hell out of it, get ideas, even inspiration. “And as imagination bodies forth /The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen / Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing /A local habitation and a name.” Tricky business.
I dunno about "the arbitrariness of pointing to any given thing and saying it’s art. And who gets to do that, after all? Not you or me. Only the Artist does."
No, anyone can do that. Someone abstracts a moment in space and time in two or three dimensions and it can be said to be art -- by anyone. Consider photographs. Does the intention to make them art matter to the viewer who finds them pleasing, compelling, whatever? Are photos of starving refugees art? If not, what is Guernica? Is a WWII propaganda film art?
It's a silly exercise. In the end, it doesn't matter what the creator intended. The artifact finds its meaning and significance in social discourse around it.
Come up to Boston and let's visit The Museum of Bad Art (https://museumofbadart.org/) and let's talk about it.
“It’s not kitsch,” [curator-in-chief Michael Frank] emphasized. “But what is tongue-and-cheek…is that we’re not mocking the artists, we’re mocking the knitted eyebrows of the world of art criticism.” In essence, MOBA legitimately questions what, or who, makes a piece of art “important”—the idea that the “right person” has to say, “This is good”—and it has a lot of fun in the process.
I, too, thought that the early paintings and drawings were the revelation of this show. That Duchamp was so skilled with a pen and paper was interesting to me. The paintings struck me as of a piece with his time in a fairly dull way. As if Gaugin had stayed home. Another thing that was interesting was that the readymades that were original still held power for me. Appolinaire Paints was one example, but With Hidden Noise is my favorite - the idea that there is something hidden in a work of art that even the artist cannot identify feels powerful to me.
On the other hand, the other reproductions of the other readymades - the urinal, the bottle racks - seemed antithetical to Duchamp's original sense of humor and spontaneity. Apparently it is not only the artist who gets to turn ordinary things around and say they are now art - the curator and the art dealer can do it to.
Thanks for the reply. I have a sneaking suspicion that any given work of modern art is a scam, even if I’m enjoying the hell out of it, get ideas, even inspiration. “And as imagination bodies forth /The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen / Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing /A local habitation and a name.” Tricky business.
I dunno about "the arbitrariness of pointing to any given thing and saying it’s art. And who gets to do that, after all? Not you or me. Only the Artist does."
No, anyone can do that. Someone abstracts a moment in space and time in two or three dimensions and it can be said to be art -- by anyone. Consider photographs. Does the intention to make them art matter to the viewer who finds them pleasing, compelling, whatever? Are photos of starving refugees art? If not, what is Guernica? Is a WWII propaganda film art?
It's a silly exercise. In the end, it doesn't matter what the creator intended. The artifact finds its meaning and significance in social discourse around it.
Come up to Boston and let's visit The Museum of Bad Art (https://museumofbadart.org/) and let's talk about it.
“It’s not kitsch,” [curator-in-chief Michael Frank] emphasized. “But what is tongue-and-cheek…is that we’re not mocking the artists, we’re mocking the knitted eyebrows of the world of art criticism.” In essence, MOBA legitimately questions what, or who, makes a piece of art “important”—the idea that the “right person” has to say, “This is good”—and it has a lot of fun in the process.
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2017/12/somerville-museum-of-bad-art