Ray Jay should have been on my list. I will get to him soon. In the meantime, you can read my earlier essay about him here.
Month: April 2008
Energy That Matters: Marcel Duchamp
- Jean Baudrillard
- Charles Bukowski
- John Cage
- Leonard Cohen
- Marcel Duchamp
It has taken me a while to get to this entry. Duchamp, for me, ranks with John Cage as a figure of such incredible importance to the arts that it is simply not possible to sum him up in a few short sentences. At least not with a sense of justice. But then, since I did it for Cage, I'll do it for Duchamp too! Just remember that this is only the twenty second elevator speech version. Duchamp was active in the early part of the 20th century primarily as a painter. While even his paintings were revolutionary for their time (he included the dimension of time, taking cubism to another level - and cubism was already considered revolutionary), his real revolution came with his exhibition of the "ready-made" as a work of art. He turned a urinal 90 degrees, called it "Fountain", and signed it "R. Mutt", he brought a shovel into a gallery and called it, "in advance of a broken arm", and he exhibited a found bottle rack as a finished sculpture. His actions angered and confused the general public, and also most of the artistic elite. People ridiculed him and his work. But these simple actions by an artist changed art irrevocably and forever. These works forced people to ask not only what is "good art" or "bad art", but "what is art"? What can be art? What makes an object art anyway? Who can make art? Who can decide what is or is not art? Marcel Duchamp changed not only the world of art. He changed the world.
