The greatest philosopher in modern art? Or did the art world make him, artificially construct him into a “readymade” himself, the philosopher who would trash tradition and under the pretext of modernism and the new, engage in the kind of dead-end misogyny and patriarchy he was ostensibly freeing the art world from. At heart, was as philosophy goes, given to the philosophical basis of say a Heidegger in his sparring anf jabbing with the structure of aesthetic convention that had been rigor-mortisized with the Protestant ethic of the Enlightenment, consumerism and the rampant individualism it seemed to create. Hard to say.
—This collection of masterpieces by the Italian Primitives was acquired early in the 19th century by the German baron Bernard von Lindenau (1779-1854). An eminent politician, art enthusiast and philanthropist, Bernard von Lindenau opened a vast, classical-style house in his native town of Altenburg, south of Dresden, in 1848 in order to exhibit his collections of works of art and to encourage wider access to culture “for the education of the young and the pleasure of the old”.
With German reunification and the end of the Communist regime, western researchers were once again able to access this unique, forgotten collection. —Read More:http://musee-jacquemart-andre.com/en/events/italian-primitives-altenburg-collection
There is no doubt he contributed to 20th century art, its the nature of that contribution and in particular the way it shaped a “business” ethic of art as seen in Warhol and even worse poseurs and masters of the gesture in Koons, Hirst, McCarthy et al. that have pushed money values of art to the forefront, subsuming all other considerations, that places Duchamp central in any study of aesthetics.
—There are of course a few sharp, disorienting turns thrown in to be sure that the viewer, if he comes to the right conclusion, arrives there giddy. The medieval-looking door, heavy and dilapidated as European art tradition, yet aesthetically neutral as a readymade. The female figure whose slightly displaced genitalia evade the pornographic pleasures of realism by the virtual fig-leaf of deformity. The bed of twigs is there to make the spectator uncomfortable. The whole composition is a sendup on the order of Euripides’ Bacchae. It parodies the aesthetic ideals cherished from the Renaissance on. (Women are beautiful. Painting should be beautiful. The most beautiful painting should show a beautiful woman.) At the same time it makes fun of the aesthetic dogmas of the twentieth century. (The world is ugly. Painting should be ugly. The most meaningful painting should show a hideous woman.)—Read More:http://www.invisiblebooks.com/Duchamp.htm
Duchamp’s scientific style was directed against the aesthetic preconceptions that had defined art since the Renaissance. (Interestingly, when asked what traditional painting he did like, he professed an admiration for the pre-Renaissance Italian Primitives.) Duchamp used the term “retinal” as a concise formulation of his opposition to the received opinions about beauty and form that had been in effect since the fourteenth century and da Vinci. He said
. . . too great an importance [has been] given to the retinal. Since Courbet, it’s been believed that painting is addressed to the retina. That was everyone’s error. The retinal shudder! Before, painting had other functions: it could be religious, philosophical, moral.
—but Philip Larson argues an interesting point (although without citing a source for this fact, his assertion seems just as ungrounded as the speculations he argues against): “Not found in most writings about Duchamp is the faintly amusing fact that Duchamp intended us to read the inscription as a series of enunciated French letters, like O.U.R.A.Q.T. in English. The Duchamp blurb comes out as something more unforgivable than ‘She has a hot ass’” .
Finally, Duchamp’s choice of the Mona Lisa may not have been as arbitrary as often assumed. There may be a more personal reason why Duchamp focused on this particular example of ideal aesthetic beauty. Duchamp’s friend Guillaume Apollinaire was falsely detained in connection with the theft of the Mona Lisa and some small sculptures from the Louvre several years prior to Duchamp’s creation of this Readymade. This may be Duchamp’s way of indirectly referencing his friend Apollinaire.—Read More:http://www.toutfait.com/unmaking_the_museum/LHOOQ.html
Duchamp was endeavoring to dispel aesthetic dogma, and the adoption of a scientific style enabled him to do so in a form that matched his own cool and intellectual stance. He himself describes his line as
Mechanical drawing. It upholds no taste, since it is outside pictorial convention.
Read More:http://www.invisiblebooks.com/Duchamp.htm
/10/short-guide-to-entire-history-of.html">
—The Ognissanti Madonna, Giotto,
1306-10, tempera on panel, Uffizi Read More:http://arthistoryblogger.blogspot.ca/2011/10/short-guide-to-entire-history-of.html
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