What is Art? Marcel Duchamp: Great Art Explained

In 1917 Marcel Duchamp bought a mass-produced  porcelain urinal from a plumbing suppliers, laid it on its side, signed it, and then put it in an  exhibition, and called it art. "The Fountain" as it was named, has cast a long Shadow not only over the  20th century, but also the 21st century. Over 100 years after it was created, it is still considered  one of the most revolutionary Works in art history.

It is also one of the most contentious. For some, Duchamp is the father of conceptualism, the so-called art of ideas, for other, he is a charlatan  responsible for the demise of traditional Artistry. But maybe we should look on this work differently? 

We are not talking about brush-strokes or colours, or textures, we are talking about ideas. Works like  this are important. They stimulate discussion and pose difficult questions.

This is not a film about  taste or style, and it is not a film about what is right or wrong. It is a film that like Duchamp's  urinal, asked the question: "What is art? " Born in Normandy in 1887, Duchamp had a perfectly  normal middle-class upbringing.

His grandfather was a painter and they had a fairly cultural life.  His father was a notary, an important legal figure in France, and Marcel was one of six children,  of whom four became artists. Rather to their father's disappointment.

The young Duchamp was  intelligent but not very academic. He knew from an early age he wanted to be an artist. One  of his earliest Works was painted when he was only 15 years old, and shows his debt  to the post Impressionists.

In 1902 at the age of 16, he moved to Paris to live with his  artist brother. Arriving in the city just when the Great Revolutions in modern painting were  emerging. Fauvism around 1905, and then a couple of years later cubism.

His two older brothers and  his sister, were very much involved with the Cubist movement, and around this time Duchamp's  own work began to reflect a shift towards that style. In 1911 he produced this painting, using  Cubist principles, but his breakthrough was this painting, which is more ambivalent in  its relationship with cubism. He still used The limited pallet and the fragmentation of  that movement, but his figure is in a state of Perpetual Motion, something the Italian  futurists were exploring.

Just before the painting's first presentation at the 1912  Salon des Indépendants in Paris, it was rejected by the Cubist as being "too futurist", and  he was told the title of the work was too literal. This was a real turning point for  Duchamp, and after this he had very little interest in groups, or being told what to do.  Duchamp: "No I never enjoyed being part of a group.

I've always wanted to make something of "personal"  contribution to it, which is only can only be done if you think by yourself and not follow  the general rules of the of the group. " In 1912, Duchamp, Constantin Brancusi and  Fernand Léger attended the Paris Aviation salon. All three were astounded at the sheer beauty of  the huge airplane propellers on display.

"Painting is washed up", Duchamp said to his companions after  a moment of silence, "Who will ever do anything better than that propeller? can you? ".

In that moment,  Duchamp was presented with the possibility of changing the rules of Art, and inventing from  scratch an entirely new way of being an artist. In 1913, he abandoned art altogether and got a job  as a librarian. Ironically, he was never much of a reader, and it was during this period he carried  out the only serious sustained reading he did in his life.

He studied mathematics and physics, read  a lot of books written by the French mathematician and theoretical physicist Henri Poincaré, and started  experimenting with combining art and scientific concepts, a more cerebral approach. This was an  exhilarating time, when new discoveries had shaken the foundations of science. Periodicals,  books, performances, and lectures, revealed groundbreaking scientific and mathematical  theories in physics, psychology, biolog,y and many other disciplines.

Ideas and Concepts which  were being discussed in artistic and intellectual circles. Poicaré is best known today for laying  the mathematical foundations of Chaos Theory, but his writings on the fourth dimension, and  his philosophical discussions of the breakdown of principles would be a major influence on Duchamp's new art. The Notions of probability and chance, played an important role in Poincarè's  ideas as it would with Duchamp, and eventually the Dada movement.

The element of chance in art is  not a new idea. Leonardo da Vinci advocated chance as an inspiration and encouraged the viewers  to search for meaning in chaos, and later in the 18th century artists like Alexander Cozens,  an English landscape painter, expanded on the idea. It became Duchamp's method to move away from  conscious thought, and his great contribution to Artistic debate, the readymade, would be  a direct development of his engagement with chance.

Duchamp's great work of chance, was  his first readymade "Bicycle Wheel" in 1913. At his Paris Studio, Duchamp mounted a bicycle  wheel upside down onto a stool, spinning it occasionally just to watch it in motion, as the  spokes blurred. He had no intention of showing it to anyone and didn't even think of it as a work  of art.

Duchamp: "For example in that um bicycle wheel, see here, it was 1913, it was in Paris. The word  didn't exist, the thought did not exist in my mind". Duchamp used the term "readymade" later to describe  works of art he made from manufactured found objects.

But in 1913, bicycle wheel wasn't  created as a work of art and wasn't formly shown in a gallery space until 1951, and even  then it was a replica. Like all his readymades, and there weren't that many, the wheel was chosen  because it was a functional everyday item, with a total absence of good or bad taste. The readymade  defied the notion that art must be beautiful.

Well then after, that in 1914, I had the thing called "The Bottle Rack". It was a dryer for bottles, made of iron, manufactured". He could have had no  idea just how important these artifacts would be in art history, and we wouldn't know for quite a  while.

We need to remember, how many people would have seen these readymades? Probably less than  a handful. So it wasn't the seismic event some see it as, and it didn't cause people to 'rethink'  art.

In fact Duchamp didn't really think about it as "art" himself until around 1916 - and by then it was  too late. The readymades had all been destroyed! It is important to note, that contrary to Modern  conspiracy theories, that conceptual art was a "money-making cynical invention", Duchamp didn't sell  any of these, or make any money from the readymades, most of which he gave away.

In fact, he made next  to nothing from art, until his Pasadena show in 1963. The Art Market was not the Behemoth it is today. Duchamp: "I believe that art, is the only form of  activity in which man as Man, shows himself to be a true individual".

One of the biggest effects  of the readymade was on the discussion about the definition of Art. In the 12th century, according to  the Oxford English Dictionary, art was defined as "skill at doing anything as a result of knowledge  and practice". So for example, the monks who created something as glorious as the Book of Kells, would have seen themselves as Craftsmen, not artists.

By the time of the Renaissance, artists  evolved from Anonymous Craftsmen to individuals, practicing an intellectual Pursuit. Paving the  way for the modern idea of an artist. In 1740, we get our first real definition of what art is from a writer on Aesthetics, Charles Batteux, who wrote a book called "The Fine Arts reduced to a  single principle", which was an attempt to find unity among the different theories of beauty and  taste, and create a single principle, a clear-cut idea of what constitutes "Fine Art".

Batteaux's views were  widely accepted, not only in France, but throughout Europe. He stated that "fine arts are fine or  beautiful things, which please of themselves, always in Imitation of Nature, and requiring  genius". The main idea of Batteaux was that the Arts were a cause of "pleasure", a simple idea that  really took hold.

Emmanuel Kent, in 1790 gave a more complicated and Nuanced description, that fine  art is "not how it is judged by a viewer but how it is created". The idea revolves around two new  Concepts: "The genius" and "aesthetic ideas". By the 19th century, photography was capable of producing  nature perfectly, and there is a move in the Arts towards abstraction, and away from the idea that "Art equals Beauty".

Art Nouveau, Impressionism and Fauvism, once seen as revolutionary ideas, were now acceptable  to the mainstream, and there was a crisis of sorts in what art meant. Modernism brought with it  a revolution in thoughts and ideas, as well as new challenges to the definition of art, with works  like Duchamp's bicycle wheel being included in the concept of what art was, and the definition was  moving away from the narrow idea of beauty. The idea of "what is art?

" had to be expanded to  accommodate these new works and ideas. By 1974, the American philosopher George Dickie, was  advocating the idea that art institutions such as museums and galleries, or anyone who says they  are an artist, have the power to dictate what is art and what is not. There are three key points  to consider when discussing Duchamp's Readymades.

First: Selecting an object IS a creative act. Second:  When an object's practical function is removed, it becomes something else. Third: The act of presenting  the object, and giving it a title, introduces a new thought, thereby giving it a new meaning.

So it  took 300 years, but the conventional question of "what is art? " has shifted beyond seeing it as a  skill or as a concept of Beauty. Beyond something that lies in shape, shapes colour, and line. 

To ideas and Concepts created with intense and purpose. While Duchamp was unintentionally  inventing the readymade, his painting, which the cubist's rejected in Paris, "Nude descending  a staircase", was selected for the 1913 Armory show in New York City, where Americans  accustomed to more naturalistic art were scandalised. It was compared to an "explosion  in a shingle Factory" or a "pile of golf clubs".

And cartoonists satirised the piece. This footage  is from that time. Let's take a moment, to look at the clothes, the cars, the people.

Duchamp is  considered scandalous now, imagine what they thought in 1913. By this time, Duchamp was  already feeling increasingly isolated in France, and saw the United States as a way to  escape what he saw as the stifling art scene. Then, the first world war broke out, and Duchamp,  who was exempt from military service due to a heart murmur, decided it was time to move to New York  City.

He arrived in June 1914, surprised to find out that the Scandal had made him the most famous  modern artist in America, and all his paintings at the Armory show had sold out. A New York Gallery  offered him $10,000 a year an absolute fortune then, for his entire output of paintings. But he  refused, saying he was finished with painting.

This  was 2 years before the fountain. In early 1916,  Duchamp started to rethink ideas around the readymades he had left in Paris. He wrote to his sister  to ask if she could send them to New York, but it was too late.

She had thrown them all out as  junk when cleaning out his studio in Paris in 1915. Humour is very much part of Duchamp's  modus operandi, and I think that although he wanted his ideas to be taken seriously.  he also wanted "not being serious", to be taken seriously.

Then and now, the art World lacks any sense of humour or irony, but Duchamp had a mischievous streak, and was willing to ask big and  very serious questions, but with a healthy dose of humour and skepticism. So far his Readymades had been a  sort of "private Recreation", but the "Fountain" would be a very public attack on the contradictions  of the art World. Some people see Fountain as a "Joke", and that's not a bad description.

It started  out, in a way, as one of the most subversive jokes of the 20th century. The American Society of  Independent Artists was founded in 1917 and Duchamp was one of the directors. The independents  saw themselves as championing everything new and progressive in art, and to that effect, their first  exhibition didn't have any committee or jury.

It was designed to break down the barriers  artist faced, and as long as you paid $6 you could submit two Works, no questions asked.  Duchamp disliked the group - as he disliked all groups, and decided to provoke them. To test them  even.

It was in that frame of mind, that in April 1917, Duchamp made his way to the JL Mott Iron  Works, a plumbing suppliers situated at 118 Fifth Ave. The only way for Duchamp's "provocation"  to work, was by submitting Fountain under a false name: Richard Mutt. The name was derived from  the manufacturer's name, but also inspired by the comic strip "Mutt and Jeff" which Duchamp loved. 

and "Richard" is French slang for a rich showoff. or a money bags. The committee decided, after much  debate, that Richard Mutt's "Fountain", was not a work of art, but they were tied by their own rules  into accepting it.

Fountain however was never seen by the public at the exhibition, and was not  mentioned in the catalogue. Instead, it remained for the whole show hidden behind a curtain, an act of  cowardice by the committee. A photo was taken by Alfred Stieglitz, and that was the last anyone  saw saw of the actual urinal.

The object had been thrown away. The thoughts and the ideas  behind the object however, could not so easily be disposed of, and in both the literature that  followed, and the ideas that sprang forth from it, Duchamp's Fountain had ignited the spark, and art would never be the same again. Many of Duchamp's original readymades,  like Fountain, were lost, dismantled, or destroyed, and by the 1960s, only seven of  Duchamp's 14 original readymades remained, or survived only as photographs.

Starting in 1964,  Arturo Schwartz collaborated with Duchamp on producing replicas of 14 of his most important  readymades, in numbered and signed editions. Ironically, Schwarz had to return to traditional sculptural  techniques to recreate them, challenging the very idea of the original readymade. Interviewer: "What would  happen if in fact these manufactured Readymades, were mass-produced, and we could all buy one?

" Duchamp: "No no, you have to sign them. They are signed. They are signed and numbered.

An  edition of eight each, like any sculpture, so it's still in the realm of Art. In the form of technique, you just make eight, and you sign them and number them". The replicas sent shock waves through the  art World, by challenging traditional ideas of "authorship", "identity", and the artist role, while  paradoxically preserving certain qualities of the original Works, ultimately becoming stand-ins for  the readymades.

Ever the provocateur, Duchamp saw it as an opportunity to create controversy and challenge  the artistic establishment. He embraced replication as a way of rethinking terms, such as creativity,  originality, and value. And to blur conventional categories.

Everyone loves a conspiracy, especially  if it debunks Modern Art. And by challenging Duchamp's authorship of the fountain, you are also  challenging the very Concepts. In 1982, a letter was found, dated 11th of April 1917.

In it, Duchamp  wrote to his sister: "One of my female friends, under a masculine pseudonym "Richard Mutt", sent in  a porcelain urinal as a sculpture". This letter has led to claims the fountain was actually created by an  unnamed woman, not Duchamp. He didn't identify his "female friend", but many candidates have been put  forward as creators.

Most notably the Dadaist, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. One of the most  extraordinary characters in art history. A poet, performance artist, and object maker.

A truly  extraordinary woman. However, Freytag-Loringhoven, despite her talent for self-promotion, never  claimed this work as her own. either at the time, or in the years that followed, whether in private  conversations, or in published writings.

Furthermore, none of the many individuals involved, ever  mentioned her name in connection with the work, either at the time or in their later interviews or  memoirs. Duchamp himself, adopted a female Persona in the early 1920s Rrose Selavy, and 3 weeks before  the fountain scandal, he wore women's clothing to an inaugural party for the magazine, "The blind man".  So there is speculation that the female friend he mentions to his sister was his female alter ego. 

There were however, women in the New York Avant-Garde scene, who WERE involved in the 1917 Fountain  incident, and are more likely candidates for the mystery "female friend". Women who, like Freytag- -Loringhoven have also been forgotten about in history. Louise Norton, and Beatrice Wood.

Both  crucial contributors to the story of the fountain. As noted, it was critical that the work should  not be submitted by Duchamp. I think the important thing to point out here, is that in his letter he  wrote "sent", and not "created".

Beatrice Wood, a friend of Duchamp, was an artist and writer who made an  important contribution to the myth surrounding this new Infamous, but unseen object. Wood wrote  the first defence of fountain in her 1917 article, "The Richard Mutt case", where crucially she  wrote: :Whether MrMutt, with his own hands made the fountain or not, has no importance. He chose it. 

He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under  the new title and point of view. Created a new thought for that object". In her later memoirs, Wood  reiterated that the fountain was in fact created by Duchamp.

Louis Norton was a Dada poet, a writer, and a  close friend of Duchamp, and she too is important in the story. She is almost certainly the "female  friend", who sent in the fountain on his behalf. We can't be 100% certain, but it is her address  partially detectable on the paper entry ticket in the Stieglitz photograph.

The likeliest candidate for  the "female friend". Duchamp claimed responsibility for "Fountain" until the end of his life in  1968, and knowing what we know about the artist, if he was not the creator, he would have taken great joy in revealing that. In 1923, at  the age of 36, Duchamp suddenly announced that   he had "given up art for chess".

From his early painting, "Portrait of chess players" in 1911 to "Opposition  and sister squares are reconciled" of 1932, to "Reunion", the performance chess game he staged with  John Cage in 1968, the game of chess was important to Duchamp, who saw many connections between chess  and art. Duchamp: "Everybody can play chess, but I took it very seriously, and enjoyed it, because I found some  common points between chess and painting. Actually, when you play a game of chess, it is like designing  something or constructing a mechanism of some kind".

He had played chess since he was a child, and  as an adult he played for France in championships, wrote a chess book, translated another, covered  chess for "Le Soir" newspaper, and became an official of the French Chess Federation. "The chess pieces are  the block alphabet which shapes thoughts", he once said, "And these thoughts, although making a visual  design on the chessboard, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem". Chess and Duchamp make  sense: He was disciplined and self-absorbed, happy to work alone for long hours and days, which made  studying the games of the great Masters possible.

He said that "while all artists were not chess  players, all chess players were artists", and he loved the conceptual nature of the game,  its pointlessness, and the nearly infinite possible combinations of moves and tactics. He was  described by a chess master as someone who would always take risks in order to play a beautiful  game, rather than be cautious and brutal to win. The kind of risks he had taken as an artist. 

A great conceptual artist quitting the art world to play chess, would be a lovely way to end  this film. But sadly, it is yet another strategic game that Duchamp was playing. He wanted to be  known as the artist whose final artwork was to quit art to play chess, but in fact he quietly  created artistic experiments for the rest of his life.

He worked on films, in which he also made  appearances, and he began a huge project creating miniature versions of all of his own works that  he put into a suitcase as a kind of traveling museum. At the age of 76, Duchamp agreed to hold his first ever career retrospective at the Pasadena art museum in 1963, then an obscure  museum, in a provincial Outpost. The impact of that show, had a huge effect on  a generation of artists who would go on to revolutionise the contemporary  Art world.

When he died, 5 years later, it was discovered that he had been  working for 20 years in total secrecy on his last major work "Étant Donnés", an installation  visible only through a peephole in a wooden door. It was a total surprise to the art  world. But as with all his works, it was a collaboration.

Not between himself and another  artist, or curator, or writer, but between him and us. Duchamp: "The creative act is not performed by the  artist alone. The Spectator brings the work into contact with the external World, by deciphering  and interpreting its inner qualification.

And thus, adds his contribution to the creative act". Both the  artist and the viewer are necessary to complete a work of art. We bring our own external thoughts  and ideas into Duchamp's world, and by doing so, we are challenged to ask the question: "What is  art?

" - Maybe, the answer is in the question? Interviewer: "Why did you make it so difficult? "  Duchamp: "Well, because I didn't want to make it easy".