Marcel Duchamp in Modern Culture - Essay Example

? Marcel Duchamp was born in Blainville France in 1887 and died in Neuilly-sur-seine in 1968 [Hughes and Reader, 1998, p. 163]. Duchamp grew up in a pretty cultivated home, and this can be inferred by the fact that in 1925 he was ranked sixth across the entire country, as a chess player and because one of his brother's was a very accomplished painter, and his other brother was an accomplished sculptor [Hughes and Reader, 1998, p. 163]. By a relatively young age, he was well-schooled in the both the history and the techniques of a variety of fine art genres and styles or movements. It can be said that his early maturation was one where the whole idea of modernity was being formulated and shaped. Particular to that was the avant-garde movement known as the Dadaists and the Surrealists: "the mission of the early 20th Century avant-garde thus consisted in undermining the idea of art's 'autonomy' (art for art's sake) in favour of a new merging of art into what he calls the 'praxis of life'." [Hopkins, 2004, p. 2]. The work being examined in the following, falls within the genre of this movement, and thus, one of the running themes explored throughout this discussion, will address how L.H.O.O.Q. (1919) [Hopkins, 2004, p. 45] can be understood as an expression of the avant-garde of his age, and how this fits within the agenda of the Dadaists. In introductory terms, Dadaism is a movement that sought to deconstruct the relationship of art to the power structures that financed it, so to speak. By challenging the power relations surrounding the work of art, the further agenda of exposing the essentially "bourgeoisie" values are likewise a theme that is incorporated into the actual pieces or works of art themselves. In 1915, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) moved to New York City from Paris [Hopkins, 2004, p. 9]. In Duchamp's own words, he was not moving to New York so much as he was fleeing the art community in Paris which he believed was burdened by the history and traditions of European art. As he states: “If only America would realize that the art of Europe is finished – dead – and that America is the country of the art of the future . . . Look at the skyscrapers! Has Europe anything to show more beautiful than these? New York is a work of art, a complete work of art . . . And I believe that the idea of demolishing old buildings, old souvenirs, is fine . . . The dead should not be permitted to be so much stronger than the living. We must learn to forget the past, to live our own lives in our own time.” [Kalaidjian, Ed., 2005, 195]. In terms of the back drop of rejecting history or the tradition of art, the work in question eventually came to be known as a 'ready-made'. That is, a found object which has been altered or modified in a way, and then presented as a work of art. The work in question [APPENDIX A] is a reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, which is arguably, the most famous work that is housed in the Louvre in Paris. As far as the modifications go with this particular work, Duchamp has merely added a mustache and titled the work with the initials L.H.O.O.Q.. This title is supposed to be a pun or a play on the French: “Elle a chaud au cul" and as translated into English, the phrase means "She has a hot ass" [Seigel, 1995, 119] . There is an interesting controversy about the work, that it is germane to the very meaning of the work itself. One of the important aspects of a work like this, is the very capacity for it to be photographed and reproduced. Indeed, the technique involved with the work in the first sense involves photography insofar as the image itself is initially a photograph of the Mona Lisa: "photography was crucial in disseminating Duchamp" [Hopkins, 2004, p. 46]. The contemporary twist on the controversy occurred in 2006 when the art critic and editor of Art in America, had to issue an apology for misunderstanding the authenticity and provenance of a reproduction of Duchamp's famous work: “I was wrong in 'Dada Lives' to claim that Francis Picabia's bungled 1920 reproduction ... was lost to posterity” [Stuckey, 2006, 33]. Francis Picabia was a founding Dadaist along with, and friend of Duchamp who reproduced L.H.O.O.Q. (1919) after receiving permission directly from the artist [Hopkins, 2004, 36]. However, he did not reproduce it initially with a mustache drawn on it, and when the work resurfaced decades later, Duchamp was given the opportunity to correct the original reproduction, and in 1942 he drew a mustache on the Mona Lisa copy. As one of the very few works of art that have any 'first hand' mark by Duchamp, the Picabia reproduction is an important 20th century masterpiece, so to speak, and the following will focus on the importance of this particular work which was originally conceived on Duchamp's self imposed exile from Paris to New York. My own feelings about the work are a story of change and transformation. It is worth beginning the change that took place at the beginning, and therefore, with the immediate sensory impression of the work. Within a very contemporary perspective or cultural back-drop, it is difficult to be impressed with the work in the immediate. Any individual of a certain age, has grown up with a tremendous amount of exposure to all of the basic elements in the work. That is, it is difficult to get through life without having been exposed to lots of photographs or reproductions, graffiti art of all shapes, sizes and locations, and finally, the Mona Lisa itself. It is probably the single biggest known work of art in the Western World, if not the world. Moreover, regarding the quality of the reproduction, it is poor in quality. In the immediate sense, it can be said to be one of the things that detracts or refracts attention away from the art. While it may have been state of the art technology in 1919, it has either not lasted with any measure of quality, or it has deteriorated over time. Finally, the oblique nature of the title that is affixed to it, does not really allow the viewer any immediate sense of what is going on with the work. Very much, a title can often transpose the very meaning of a work, and there is little or no opportunity for that with the work in question. And, because the work is only in abbreviated form. However, the abbreviation is itself something that begs further inspection, and one of the things about the immediate experience, is that while it may be ungratifying as a sensation, the immediate experience almost necessarily leads into further or deeper inspection. It is difficult not to be curious about the abbreviation, and thus the viewer is drawn into or engaged by this process. As with most abstract or avant-garde art. It is difficult to simply take anything at face value, or as Hopkins says, one has to at least reject or challenge the notion that there is such a thing as "art for art's sake" [Hopkins, 2004, p. 2]. Moreover, and in keeping with the passage from Hopkins quoted earlier in this essay, there is a "praxis of life" involved with the work in question [Hopkins, 2004, p. 2]. There is a web or network of meanings about the work that need to be considered, just so that one can maintain that they have some sense of the whole of the work. What geometry, the physics of light and technique were as far as being the language to understand a renaissance work of art, the avant-garde, surrealism and Dadaism in particular are important as background for L.H.O.O.Q.. In this regard, the work moves from an immediate reproduction of graffiti, to something which is important or significant in broader and more conceptual terms. The meaning of the work of art, is not even located in the work of art, and part of the meaning is that is likewise not an aesthetic work. Just as any one's sense impression of the work will yield, the Duchamp piece has little if any aesthetic value to it. As one is drawn into the title itself, one is drawn into the wider idea of the work itself. A simple investigation will yield that the work is a commentary both on the history of art, but also the contemporary 'commodification' of art. It seems to me that if Duchamp was able to actually sell this work in his own time, and he was, it follows that he accomplished one of the important dimensions of the work and that concerns the business of art. Art is a “commodity” according to the Dadaists and the Surrealists, and thus, the very commodification of the work is the work itself. What Duchamp did was make a work of fine art out of materials, genres and a basic style that had never been done before. Because Duchamp's piece is considered a 'work of fine art', it raises the very question as to what art itself is? Duchamp's re-presentation of the Mona Lisa which is labeled as having been conceived in 1919 [Hopkins, 2004, p. , is a work of 'conceptual found object'. Label's are often important, and the fact that he indicates the 'conceptualization' of the work as notable rather than the completion, anticipates the further reproduction of it but also the significance of 'conceiving'. After the invention of the camera, the move to impressionism and then abstract expressionism, was facilitated by the need to focus or distill other dimensions of the visual plane. If expressionism is a work that has to be understood has to be understood in terms of its emotional content, and if impressionism is to be understood as a concentration of different types of visual data, the Dadaism of Duchamp is a distillation that makes one consider thought. What emotions are to expressionism, conceptualizing is to Dadaism. The ready-made is a disposable representation that can be vandalized, what endures or is to be distilled or focused on are the concepts that inform this piece. Conceived of in 1919, the L.H.O.O.Q is an important landmark on the way to contemporary trends like conceptual art, found object art, the concern about the commodification of art, and graphic arts to name some themes that owe a debt of gratitude to Duchamp. Works Cited: Hopkins, David. 2004. Dadaism and Surrealism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hughes, Alex and Reader, Keith. 1998. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture. London: Routledge. Kalaidjian, Walter. 2005. The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Seigel, Jerrold L. 1995. The Private Lives of Marcel Duchamp: Desire, Liberation and the Self in Modern Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.. Stuckey, Charles. 2006. “Picabia's L.H.O.O.Q. Rediscovered Again”. Art in America, September, Vol. 94 Issue 8, pp. 33-33. Read More