Marcel Duchamp Exhibit at MoMA

 

Duchamp in 1963 with readymade, Bicycle Wheel

The art of Marcel Duchamp is not for everyone, but it is for me.  Truly, his art underlines the medieval saying De gustibus non disputandum est, “There’s no point arguing about taste.”  While not having any surveys at hand, I suspect that most people wouldn’t be enthusiastic about his efforts.

That’s fine; those of us who like what he did can do so in any case.

So, what did Duchamp bring to the table of Art history?  Humor.  Satire.  Scandal even.  And the latter because of his attitude about his work as much as the art itself.  When transport of The Large Glass caused both panes to fracture, he thought that it completed the work, noting the symmetry of the breaks. 

This does not mean that he wasn’t serious about what he did, not at all.  Looking at the body of work, it is clear that he took pains to create ever so precisely whether it was 2-D or 3-D pieces.  Of course, the ready-mades—bottle-racks, snow shovels, etc.—don’t fit that at all, as Duchamp thumbed his nose at what critics considered taste.

Aside from his art, Duchamp loved chess.  I can’t recall the quote exactly, but he commented something as “All chess players are artists, but not all artists are chess players.”  He even made his own chess pieces.  As someone who enjoys the game, this is just one more reason for me to admire him.

I do not have to like everything Duchamp did to appreciate him, but I do like most of his art.  His portable galleries that consisted of his hand-made reproductions of his work are intriguing in themselves; I did not know he made so many of these.

Walking throughout the exhibit, I realized that I was smiling most of the time.  Whether it was because I was close to laughing or simply happy is hard to say; maybe both?  Anyway, I’m not sure I can say that about any other show I have ever attended.

Opening on April 12, the Duchamp show is at the Museum of Modern Art and runs to August 22.

 

Ancestral Background, Belief, and Personal Expression

 

I could have entitled this as “What Does It Matter if My Father were a Baptist and My Mother were a Catholic?”  Another could have been “What is the Artistic Meaning that My Father’s Lineage was Northern British Isles and My Mother’s was Southern Italy?”  

(By the way, in my drawings here of my parents, my mother’s hair was dark but I just didn’t fill it in when drawing.)

Neither of these titles would get to the nub of what I want to note and both may lead one into another direction of either belief or ancestry, and those would be too narrow.

Instead, I am trying to figure out if there is any meaning at all to my own artistic expression and my upbringing and heritage.  Do they all work together?

I suppose that I can claim they do work together since, after all, here I am drawing particular kinds of artwork and everything I’ve lived through so far has led to this moment of artistic expression. 

That would mean those expressions necessarily connect to my past as well as looking forward to my future, but that is also a presumption that my art is a clear and direct understanding of those moments.  I cannot assert, however, that it is the case simply because I may not have perfect comprehension of my life.  What can I affirm?

Of course, biologically my ability to coordinate perception and making marks on paper comes from my parents, and surely family, school, and experience shaped that ability too.  Whether the drawing is an unequivocal result of those factors is another question, but something of those life events likely remains within the visual interpretation just as they are present in nearly everything else that I do.

Does this mean that there is always a direct line between personal history and the artistic outcome?  I don’t think so, since what I want to present may not be anything that my family would ever have guessed or it’s obscure that my experiences would have led to that inevitable reaction.