Faulty Landscape (1946) DuChamp bust his punky DIY moves when he shows everyone can be an artist: use your own semen
Interweaving the reading of Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class and watching a documentary on Marcel DuChamp has left me in a fertile state of imagination. I’ve always been a fan of DuChamp. I almost got arrested at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for spinning a replica of his Bicycle Wheel/Roue de bicyslette. I explained to the rent-a-cops that DuChamp stated he wanted viewers to spin and interact with his work. The original one, let alone a replica. They were not convinced.
Regardless of what his detractors may say, DuChamp’s works were often instructive in demonstrating how the barrier between ART as something to be put on display behind roped-off museum walls alongside mounted information cards announcing the responsible artist (like brand names on handbags) and the venerating viewer (with intellectually curled index finger on chin) should be destroyed. Interestingly enough, DuChamp heralded (and lampooned) the concept of mass-produced vessels of taste as early as the 1900s, setting the grounds for Warhol and Jeff Koons’s factory-assembled art. He purchased a urinal and entered it into an art show. When that “readymade” was destroyed, he commissioned replicas to be made. The art world ate it up, and The Fountain is considered today as a milestone in modern art. Maybe people didn’t get the message.
What does this say about our so-called “taste?” Is it all about supply-and-demand? And more importantly, who is doing the supplying? If you display a replica of a bottle rack in your home, one that was personally commissioned by DuChamp or Warhol, as opposed to the original bottle rack from Woolworth’s (the one the replica is created after), does that show that you have taste and a sense of style to die for? Couldn’t I just as well walk into a trailer home and see that same bottle rack and coo “wow Bertha, I didn’t know you have such an eye for high brow art!”
DuChamp’s”portable museums,” also metaphorized art as personal taste. After all, here was a handmade item consisting of unique artworks, painstakingly made straight from the artist’s hands, that fits into a small valise. It’s priceless, and yet, you can’t put it out in your fancy living room to display your trophy of taste and acquisition to the world. Isn’t it enough that you own something special and unique; who cares if no one ever finds out about your possession? What does THAT say about needing to have that possession in the first place? This query challenges the entire notion of consuming art as a form of status.
I often question how many of the things we do and need are really for ourselves, and not a signifier to outsiders. Art, when it is blindly consumed, is certainly no different than a luxury car or designer shoes.
