The Comedy of Artby Virtue Holliday & Sponsored by Museum of Time Marcel
Duchamp is either loved, hated (or not known). He was the founder
of Dada, that odd European movement that bred Surrealism later
on, a master chess player, and an enigma when it was all done.
Duchamp was fascinated by language and perception, and he expressed
this fascination through visual puns and bizarre juxtapositions
of not so much images as ideas. In the meantime, this is one of my favourites. It's called L.H.O.O.Q., (1919), and it's essentially a comment on the fetishizing of an object of art. Duchamp took a cheap poster of an over-exposed image (over-exposed as in seen too much not as in the photographic term) - the Mona Lisa, which is quite larger than Leonardo's 16th century portrait, drew a moustache and beard on the face, and added the letters L.H.O.O.Q., which sound like the French sentence "elle a chaud au cul", which roughly translated means..."she has a hot ass". How's that for lampooning art? Or actually, for harpooning the great whale. Duchamp forced our perceptions through his process in a way as he campaigned against what he called "retinal art". He influenced everyone from Dali to Warhol, and his work is as endlessly fascinating as it is amusing. For more information on this hero of the absurd, click on over to MarcelDuchamp.net.
He simply found that object, gave it his name. What then did he do? He found that object, gave it his name. Identification. What then shall we do? Shall we call it by his name or by its name? It's not a question of names. One way to write music: study Duchamp. Say it's not a Duchamp. Turn it over and it is. |
