Marcel Duchamps
Jetpak is Public
Created By: stella
Last Modified: 02/27/06
Summary: Much of Duchamp's art was a spoof on the contemporary artists of his time: he championed the art of the readimade or l'objet trouve and exhibitted a urinal, a bicycle wheel, a chocolate grinder and other articles he claimed to have discovered abandoned around the city

Symbols were ridiculed. The most well known act of degrading a famous work of art is probably Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q., a cheap postcard-sized reproduction of the Mona Lisa upon which in 1919 the artist drew a mustache and a thin goatee beard. On one hand L.H.O.O.Q. must be understood as one of Duchamp's "readymade" works of art -- works that he didn't make, but which, by having been placed intellectually within a conceptual framework of "Art," he forces the observer to see ordinary objects from new perspectives. In this way their innate aesthetic contents would make themselves manifest .

a thumbing of the nose to high culture 


Mona Lisa with Moustache

Mona Lisa with Moustache

Duchamp on the Large Glass:

  • The ideas in the Large Glass are more important than the actual realization.
  • The "Large Glass" constitutes a rehabilitation of perspective. For me, it's a mathematical, scientific perspective, based on calculations and on dimensions.
  • Everything was becoming conceptual, that is, it depended on things other than the retina.
  • What we were interested in at the time was the fourth dimension. Simply, I thought of the idea of a projection, of an invisible fourth dimension, something you couldn't see with your eyes.he use of glass has no significance other than to protect my colors, giving maximum effectiveness to the rigidity of perspective. It also took away any idea of "the hand" of materials.
  • The Large Glass is a lot better with the breaks, a hundred times better. It's the destiny of things.  
  • For me the number three is important: one is unity, two is double, duality, and three is the rest. 

The Large Glass

The Large Glass

Summary: "I believe that the artist doesn't know what he does. I attach even more importance to the spectator than to the artist."
From: http://www.jeteye.com/jetpak/18481573,,,1141070386,,myjeteye,,view.html

The "R. Mutt" signature distinguishes this urinal as a Duchamp objet d'art

The

Summary: yet research reveals the urinal is not something found and is in fact not useable

IN 1958, Lionel and Roger Penrose published a paper announcing their discovery of impossible figures, (Penrose & Penrose, 1958). These impossible figures formed a new class of visual illustrations, specifically demonstrating a foible in human perception of dimensionality in representations. If we are given a conflicting but balanced mix of visual clues, our logic in two-dimensional representations becomes overwhelmed, and we can easily be fooled about what is possible or likely in three dimensions. The rendered object, on the one hand, looks right; but on the other hand, our intuition tells us that something must be wrong and signals us to use our minds. Our faulty senses always win.

Duchamp's Impossible Bed

Duchamp's Impossible Bed

Summary: how vulnerable we are to mixed depth clues in representations, and, more broadly, to the wide gap between the seduction of the obvious ("seeing is believing...if it looks like a duck...then it's a duck") and critical thinking ("but is it a duck?").
From: http://www.jeteye.com/jetpak/18481573,,,1141070386,,myjeteye,,view.html

Objet Trouve

Objet Trouve





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