The Great Trouble with Art in This Country

The great trouble with art in this country at present, and apparently in France also, is that there is no spirit of revolt–no new ideas appears among younger artists. They are following along the paths beaten out by their predecessors, trying to do better what their predecessors have already done.

So spoke Marcel Duchamp in an interview with James Johnson Sweeney in 1946. I can imagine him rolling his eyes now to see so many mimicking what he did well, and definitively. There is plenty of art out there that takes "something from an earlier period [to] adapt it to your own work" and produces a creative approach. Most commonly now "following along the paths beaten out" by Duchamp.

Newness was only a rallying cry because of the academic rules surrounding art. How is it that the rule has now become new, new, new. What does that even mean?

The Museum of Modern Art currently has an exhibit on post-temporal art (The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World) based on the curator's idea that progression is meaningless when artists now have access to works and ideas from around the world instantaneously. Art was only about progress when art was understood as art history, bound by chronology and the Enlightenment's ideal of progress. Linking as we do across the internet no longer seeks to move forward but to produce connections, more like the rhizomatic web of Deleuze and Guattari than a ladder ever upward and outward.

Now is populated by what has been and what will be and new is no better than old, when there is so much more in it all. The 20th century wanted new, but that might not be as important for the 21st. New is often wasteful, ignorant, and blithe.

The MoMA show does a stupendous job of presenting art that is not worried about being new, creating progress, but content to use the materials and ideas that support the work, from wherever and whenever. I didn't like all the works, but the display was invigorating. If a museum, that receptacle for art history, can begin to reject the steel jaw of chronology then we might actually be looking at a new age for art, though not of art. And, wouldn't that satisfy all those who want something new?

No?
Oh well.

A ReadyMade Thought

Tonight I attended an absolutely brilliant talk by Marjorie Perloff. She was informative, eloquent, excited, all of which made her great fun to hear. Her title was The Madness of the Unexpected: Marcel Duchamp and the Survival of "High" Art. She shared so much interesting information that my hand hurt trying to note it all and I will undoubtedly be transcribing my thoughts from those notes into the space here in the days and weeks to come.

Before I proceed to the paper that I must begin this evening, however, I had to mention an experience that I will never forget. The story follows.

In her talk, Ms. Perloff of course discussed the ready-mades. Though largely focusing on the fountain of the Independent Salon on 1917 in NYC, she also addressed the reproductions and miniatures that Duchamp created over the years of his career. Duchamp was not against making money and admitted at one point that though he enjoyed making the large pieces and selling them for large amounts, it was quite helpful to also make smaller pieces which could be more easily purchased by a wider audience.

The smaller pieces were not thoughtless recreations. They were dutifully made. In fact, he was adamant about finding the exact same type of paper, ink, cardboard, or what have you, that had been used in the first. It could not simply be something similar. It had to be the same brand, thickness, color paper. The question that Ms. Perloff posed was why he would go to such lengths to do so?

The talk ended and I knew I had work to do, but I approached her as she was untangling her computer cords and drinking water to recover. An answer had suggested itself to me when she asked the question, but I could not imagine why it was not a possible answer and given her in-depth study thought she might be able to clarify for me why she had dismissed it. I asked her why it was not possible to think of the paper, the ink as his construction of form. As the French alexandrine is a strict line form of twelve syllables, interrupted in the middle by a pause and with assorted other rules fashioned around it, perhaps he had used the paper, the ink as his formal structure.

She looked at me and said, absolutely. She had no idea why she had not thought of that. Duchamp had thought of paint as a ready-made and likewise each part of his reproductions were ready-mades to be respected as individual, unique elements. That was his form. So, yes, indeed the exact requirements of the paper, the ink could be seen as his building and maintaining his form. I thanked her, and excused myself to go write my paper.

The fact is that I doubt myself all the time and am afraid too often now to ask the question or offer an answer. I am surrounded by brilliant minds and I have much to learn from them. But I also have much to learn from myself, and perhaps should come to enjoy the unique form my own thought takes. I might then find the small ready-mades my mind signs, and offer them to others without so very much hesitation.