Marcel Duchamp - Modern Painting - Essay Example

Modern Painting In the art epochs of the past we have always found a certain homogeneity of style among artists of a certain period and a certain “school” which has enabled us to “relate” an unknown work to similar known works of a given time and place, and to interpret or judge a work art against its stylistic background. Today there are so many different techniques and styles that the viewer is sometimes left confused and baffled. However, no matter what may be your attitude toward modern art, you must admit that it is exciting. It may excite you to violent antipathy or to extravagant praise, but if you are at all perceptive, it never leaves you cold. It is tremendously alive, dynamic, forceful. The techniques of representation, canonized by the Renaissance masters, were accepted by artists until the late nineteenth century just as the musicians had accepted the rules of tonality. However, constant repetition had weakened their effectiveness, and change seemed to be demanded. The beginnings of change we have already noted in Impressionistic painting, which put the emphasis less on the subject represented and more on the attitude of the artist toward his subject. This changed emphasis led artists to Abstraction, which must be thoroughly understood because it is the basis of much of modern art. The verb “abstract” has two meanings: “to take away” and “to summarize.” Both meanings were known and employed by the old masters. Cubism is a form of abstraction in which objects are first reduced to cubes and then flattened into two-dimensional shapes arranged in overlapping planes. In “Nude Descending a Staircase” by Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) we find another preoccupation of analytical Cubism: that of expressing sequential movement in time. The Cubist thus opened up many new possibilities in visual experience. The movement to regain structure in painting was initiated by Cezanne, who is known as the Father of Cubism. He advised painters to “treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective, so that each side of an object or a plane is directed toward a central point.” The concern for structure is basically classical in origin, and the classicism of Duchamp lies in his search for permanent and underlying structure. He is known for his landscapes, especially the several versions of Mont St. Victoire in which trees, houses, and other details are reduced to simple, rectangular shapes. His still life of apples, in which he used warm and cool colors for modeling, are the earliest examples of simultaneity or multiple perspective in which the subject is seen from a number of angles at the same time. Dadaism The two disastrous world wars have indelibly set their imprint on modern art. In 1916, during the period of World War I, a group of young intellectuals in Zurich, Switzerland, headed by Tristan Tzara, founded the movement which came to be known as dadaism (from the French dada, meaning “hobby horse,” or from the German word meaning “childish gabble”). It was, in fact, a violent reaction against all traditional art. Iconoclastic and contemptuous of convention, the dadaists ridiculed the bourgeois concept of art as commodity. They protested against the tyranny of artistic traditions. Marcel Duchamp and Frances Picabia, two Dadaists, did a completely unprecedented and startling act: to Da Vinci’s revered painting, Mona Lisa, known for her enigmatic smile, they added a beard and a mustache. The importance of Dadaism lies not in its antics, sometimes naughty, often startling, at other times plainly outrageous, but in its break --- however traumatic ---with outmoded ways of seeing in order to gain a new freedom for the artist in his search for meaning and new forms. In subsequent paintings, Duchamp further expanded the possibilities of Dadaism and cubism. Linear perspective was negated and the canvas was reaffirmed as a two-dimensional surface. Point of view was continually shifting, shapes were exaggerated and simplified, while color emphasized formal structure. Value, too, served to define the relationship of objects and did not refer to any particular light source. Instead of locating the objects within a receding space, the subject was brought forward for analysis on the flat picture plane. Analytical cubist paintings have the appearance of great complexity, as the subject is fragmented into its numerous aspects on the two-dimensional surface. The subject loses its recognizable appearance, except for a few clues to its identity, such as eyes, part of a guitar, or the neck of a bottle. Color is generally limited to tones of gray and brown. Subjects are quite varied, including portraits, landscapes, and still lifes. In the second phase, synthetic cubism, the picture plane loses its earlier complexity and the monochrome coloring is replaced by brighter hues. A new emphasis is given to texture, especially with cubist technique of collage which consists of adding and pasting bits of colored paper, newsprint, or other materials on the surface to reinforce its flatness, to create textural effects, and to serve as points of reference. The still life was the usual subject of synthetic cubism. Modern art became less realistic and more symbolic many of them seeming optical illusions (op-art) or combining painting with three-dimensional objects (collages) or using vivid colors in random shapes. The most extreme form of this new abstract was called Dadaism led by Marcel Duchamp of France. It was a deliberate attempt to wipe out traditional notions of beauty and seemed like a disgusted look of art. Since much of modern art could not be understood by many people, some critics have labeled modern artists as decadent or worse “crazy”. An offshoot of cubism was futurism, which imparted dynamic quality to the forms of cubism. Futurism as a style in painting strove to analyze visually the various stages of an action. It deals with the process of becoming, not being, or with the unfolding of an action, so that the painting may seem to correspond in photography to a series of multiple exposures of one action on a single film. The work of Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending in a Staircase, expresses this intention. Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912). Oil on canvas. 57 7/8" x 35 1/8". Philadelphia Museum of Art. The modern artist has been affected by the changes in his environment and by new knowledge gained by science. He has reflected these in his art not only through the use of perceptual or conceptual perspective. He has devised other ways by which he could incorporate motion in his “static” art, adding to it a fourth dimension – time, because motion occurs in time. Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase conveys a sense of movement by depicting a sequence of poses caught in stopped forms derived from the overlapping of such poses. Instead of simply showing the human body, Duchamp captures the type and degree of energy it emits as it passes through space. This 1912 painting is currently displayed at Philadelphia Museum of Art. According to Tomkins (1996), Marcel portrayed motion by consecutive overlaid prints, comparable to stroboscopic motion photography. The artwork demonstrates fundamentals of the Cubist and Futurist approaches. He acknowledged the inspiration of the stop-motion photography of Étienne-Jules Marey. Marcel initially exhibited his works Cubist museum held at Salon des Indépendants in Paris, however jurist Albert Gleizes asked Duchamps brothers, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon, instructed to have his works renamed. Given the situation, Duchamp stated: “I said nothing to my brothers. But I went immediately to the show and took my painting home in a taxi. It was really a turning point in my life, I can assure you. I saw that I would not be very much interested in groups after that.” (Tomkin, 1996) Due to this incident, Duchamp forwarded his artworks to the 1913 Armory Show in New York City. His style surprised the Americans who were used to seeing works depicting realistic style. Julian Street, an art critic for the New York Times published an article regarding Duchamp’s works as "an explosion in a shingle factory," and cartoonists ridiculed his work. It generated numerous perversions in the succeeding years. Numerous writers and publishers tried to decipher and unravel Duchamps paintings and artistic viewpoints, instead of these interviews shed light over these mysteries of Duchamp, it only made his concepts more complicated for the audience. Duchamp was a good-humored artist who stimuated constant contemplation and reflection regarding the processes of art but he expressed his thought not on a verbal manner but through another art work named Fountain. Duchamp created reasonably a small number of artworks as Marcel rapidly stirred through the avant-garde rhythms of his time. “The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act” (Duchamp, 1957) The connection between Duchamp and Dada was strengthened and affirmed through his art work called Fountain, which resembles a urinal. He had his work exhibited with the approval of the Society of Independent Artists exhibit in 1917. The Independent Artists presentations were not scrutinized and the artworks that were submitted without exclusions were displayed. Due to the uniqueness of idea, Duchamp’s Fountain was not considered as a form of art and the borad decided and convened to have Duchamp’s work removed from the display. Experiencing this rejection from the second time, Duchamp was angered by the action of the Independent Artists that he eventually resigned from his position as a member of the borad of Independent Artsists. Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, 1917, photograph by Alfred Stieglitz. Work on The Large Glass continued into 1913 with his invention of inventing a repertoire of forms with notes, sketches and painted studies, and even drawing some of his ideas on the wall of his apartment. The Large Glass (1915-23) Philadelphia Museum of Art Collection “It is necessary to arrive at selecting an object with the idea of not being impressed by this object on the basis of enjoyment of any order. However, it is difficult to select an object that absolutely does not interest you, not only on the day on which you select it, and which does not have any chance of becoming attractive or beautiful and which is neither pleasant to look at nor particularly ugly.” (Duchamp, 1957) In his studio he mounted a bicycle wheel upside down onto a stool, spinning it occasionally just to watch it. Later he denied that its creation was purposeful, though it has come to be known as the first of his readymades. "I enjoyed looking at it," he said. "Just as I enjoy looking at the flames dancing in the fireplace." (Marchel, 1957) For Duchamp creating Société Anonyme in 1920, along with Katherine Dreier and Man Ray, was the beginning of his life-long involvement in art dealing and collecting. The group collected modern art works, and arranged modern art exhibitions and lectures into the 1930s. Bottle Rack (1914), a bottle drying rack signed by Duchamp, is considered to be the first "pure" readymade. Prelude to a Broken Arm (Nov. 1915), a snow shovel, followed soon after. His Fountain, the urinal signed with the pseudonym R. Mutt that shocked the art world in 1917, was selected in 2004 as "the most influential artwork of the 20th century" by 500 renowned artists and historians. According to Tomkins (1996), “Duchamps final major art work surprised the art world that believed hed given up art for chess 25 years earlier. Given: 1 The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas (Etant donnés: 1° la chute deau / 2° le gaz déclairage) is a tableau, visible only through a peep hole in a wooden door, of a nude woman lying on her back with her face hidden and legs spread holding a gas lamp in the air in one hand against a landscape backdrop.” “Pop Art is a return to "conceptual" painting, virtually abandoned, except by the Surrealists, since Courbet, in favour of retinal painting... If you take a Campbell soup can and repeat it 50 times, you are not interested in the retinal image. What interests you is the concept that wants to put 50 Campbell soup cans on a canvas.” (Seigle, 1995) Hulten, Pontus (editor): Marcel Duchamp: Work and Life, The MIT Press, 1993. Marcel Duchamp, from Session on the Creative Act, Convention of the American Federation of Arts, Houston, Texas, April 1957. Seigel, Jerrold: The Private Worlds of Marcel Duchamp, University of California Press, 1995 Tomkins, Calvin (1996). Duchamp: A Biography. 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