Duchamp, the Dadaists and beyond
Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), the French-American literary artist heavily influenced conceptual art where the concept behind the picture is more important than the appearance. So the shift of the emphasis to the meaning of a picture or what subtext lies beneath its appearance from the visible artwork is one of the primary characteristics of Duchamp’s works. Thus Duchamp clearly intends to move away from Retinal paintings (i.e. the visible appearance of the picture) to invisible interpretations of it and thus the role of the spectator becomes of much importance. In his own words, ‘the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world…and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.’
Here Duchamp felt too dominated by Courbet’s works in the nineteenth century which emphasized on the illusionary physical aspects of painting. But the former always wanted to abandon the retinal painting and interested in ideas and intellectual side of visual art. He wanted his works to be known as literary and intellectual or rational paintings, based on interpretations.
If we trace back the background of Duchamp’s works, in Yvonne and Magdeleine Torn in Tatters (1911) he experimented with ambiguity and shift of meanings. Here he made the background figures disappear and then reappear. But the most important influence of Duchamp is his invention of the readymades. These are daily common lame objects posed as works of art. Thus he raised the question and ambiguity whether to call them art in the first place.
In Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) Duchamp followed the cubist format to distribute the figure in facets. Thus it can be compared with Picasso’s Portrait of Ambroise Vollard. The figure is so distorted that it is sometimes hard to get that it is a nude study. There are several perspectives in there in this picture. On the other hand, the figure with so many planes may appear like metallic armour plates. Here the influence of Futurism can be seen from some perspective though Duchamp denied that later. Again, here Duchamp incorporated the influence of chronophotography and made it a sequential picture much like cinema. The descending figures are distorted and arranged sequentially. The dislocations of body parts heavily reflect the influence of cubism. If the spectator feels the figures’ movements in different directions if looked at from different angles- right, left or centre. Again, in a whole, Duchamp projects a sense of mystery in this work.
Duchamp again greatly influenced the Dada movement. This break-free movement, like Duchamp’s works’ characteristics, was against the physical aspects of art and was a quest for the literary and metaphysical attitude of it. In L.H.O.O.Q. (1919), Duchamp used a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, which is a readymade and added a moustache and goatee to the character that reversed the gender and raised the question and ambiguity that if Mona Lisa becomes a male, which gender the spectator is, in a parallel world. Thus he influenced the Dadaism that rejects tradition, denies respect for elders and goes opposite of the dogmatic current. The nihilism in Dadaists rose from Nietzche’s interpretation of the death of God. Thus Dadaists put up a sense of vandalism and anarchism to art. Thus, besides the rising of the gender issue, L.H.O.O.Q. (that are the initials of a French informal saying- She has got a hot arse) raises the question that whether it should be called a work of art as apart from the facial hair, it is just a reproduction of the original Mona Lisa. Here Duchamp is asking for a cerebral reaction to the whole institute of art and thinking from the spectator’s edge is more important here than projecting an illusion from the artist’s side.
Like Vorticists, Dadaists too were all against tradition and reflect a sense of anarchism to everything. Here Duchamp turned against Modernism too where it was mostly about aesthetics and little about intellect. Duchamp’s Readymades are a shock to this convention. In the case of Bicycle Wheel(1913), the third version of which is in MoMA currently, is another readymade. The emphasis of it is not in the making but in the projection and interpretations. A bicycle wheel fixed on a kitchen stool is a useless thing as both of the objects are removed from their proper places. The same thing is applied in the case of Fountain where Duchamp posed a urinal, that too is laid horizontally, as a sculpture and is signed as R. Mutt. These are no artworks at all and rise an enigma and curiosity around them and force the onlookers to think that whether they are works of art at all. Fountain (1917) is kind of a shock to the spectators and an insult to the past masters when it finds a valuable place in the purist temple of art. Thus it raises the question of what art is all about and why we should revere it at all.
In the case of Etant Donnes (1946–1966) or ‘Given’, where Duchamp invites the spectator to look through two holes in a wooden door and in a pornographic manner to see the nude female figure inside. The pigskin coated armature figure is in there, surrounded by a photograph of a waterfall painted by Duchamp with some collage element. So with the combination of collage, photography, sculpture and the unique presentation in a voyeuristic manner, this collective work produces an enigmatic aura like most of Duchamp’s works.
Duchamp’s legacy still is in today’s Modern art’s shock and sensation. His art reflects the sense of nihilism and permanent scepticism, disbelief in everything, whose seed can be found in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Duchamp’s legacy of conceptual art lives on in Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Et in Archadia Ego, in David Mach’s Parthenon and the concept of installation as a genre, in Mona Hatoum’s installations and subsequently in Symbolism, Fantasy art and surrealism.
Thus, to sum up, the main characteristics of Duchamp’s works are ambiguity, shock, mystery presented in the works like Bicycle Wheel, Fountain and other readymades. Again he is heavily influenced by cubism, cinema, movements and dynamism in sculptures. But above all, he started the conceptual art movement which still lives in modern art. By enabling the onlookers to think and interpret it in their own ways, he made the great shift of importance from picture to the spectators. Its fruits are the later artists like Dali, Mach among others.