Alex Alvis Art

Marcel Duchamp and exploding shingles

Marcel Duchamp's painting Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) was a very scandalous painting in it's time.  Back then it was described by the press as (among other things) looking like a bunch of shingles exploding.


I'm paraphrasing a little.  I can't remember which of our presidents saw it at an exhibition but he wrote that he had a Navaho rug in his bathroom that was better art than this...not a direct quote either; he used many more words when he wrote about it.

Art means different things to different people.  That is a wonderful thing.

What did this work of art - and other works Duchamp created before "famously renounced artmaking in favor of playing chess for the remainder of his life"?

Here are some excerpts from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Website:

Embodying the intellect of his literary contemporaries Marcel Proust and James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) has been aptly described by the painter Willem de Kooning as a one-man movement. Jasper Johns has written of his work as the "field where language, thought and vision act on one another." Duchamp has had a huge impact on twentieth-century art. By World War I, he had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists as "retinal" art, intended only to please the eye. Instead, Duchamp wanted, he said, "to put art back in the service of the mind."

One of his most important works, Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) (1912) (a second version of a work on cardboard from 1911), however, reflects Duchamp's ambivalent relationship with Cubism. He adopts the limited palette of Cubist paintings, but his invigorated figure is in a state of perpetual motion—a very different effect from Picasso and Braque's Analytic Cubism that held figures tightly in place. Provoking negative reactions from even the Parisian avant-garde, the painting was rejected by the Salon des Indépendants for both its title and the artist's mechanistic, dehumanizing rendering of the female nude. The following year, it sparked controversy at the New York Armory Show, helping to establish Duchamp's reputation as a provocateur overseas and paving the way for his arrival in New York two years later.

He wanted to distance himself from traditional modes of painting in an effort to emphasize the conceptual value of a work of art, seducing the viewer through irony and verbal witticisms rather than relying on technical or aesthetic appeal. The object became a work of art because the artist had decided it would be designated as such. 

. . . . satirical works such as Duchamp's readymade Fountain (1917) tested the limits of public taste and the boundaries of artistic technique. By pushing and ultimately transgressing such boundaries within the art world, Duchamp's works reflected the artist's sensibility. His use of irony, puns, alliteration, and paradox layered the works with humor while still enabling him to comment on the dominant political and economic systems of his time.

Duchamp is associated with many artistic movements, from Cubism to Dada to Surrealism, and paved the way for later styles such as Pop (Andy Warhol), Minimalism (Robert Morris), and Conceptualism (Sol LeWitt). A prolific artist, his greatest contribution to the history of art lies in his ability to question, admonish, critique, and playfully ridicule existing norms in order to transcend the status quo—he effectively sanctioned the role of the artist to do just that.

So there you go.  Art history lesson for today.  Perhaps that is what Thurdays should be in this blog...Art History Day.  I like it!

I, for one, am proud of Duchamp that he had so much fun playing with art.  The most memorable art is made during play, I think. 

Hope your day is going well.  And play a little! ...why not?

Tomorrow?  I am going on a road trip to deliver my sculpture to A NEW GALLERY !!

If I get back early enough to post tomorrow - but

If not - I'll be back on Saturday to tell you all about it...with photos! :)

'Til then!

~Alex

Setting Yourself Up for Creativity - Pt. 8

Question - How many existentialists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Question - How many big black monoliths does it take to change a light bulb?
Question - How many light bulbs does it take to change a light bulb?
Question - How many dadaists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Question - How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Question - How many consultants does it take to change a light bulb?
Question - How many dull people does it take to change a light bulb?

Four minutes left…

Ah!  How many Irish-- sorry, sorry

Well, look, the very last thing that I can say about creativity is this: it's like humor. In a joke - the laugh comes at a moment when you connect two different frameworks of reference in a new way.

Example.  There's the old story about a woman doing a survey into sexual attitudes who stops an airline pilot and asks him - amongst other things - when he last had sexual intercourse.

We laugh -eventually - at the moment of contact between two frameworks of reference: the way we express what year it is and the 24-hour clock.

Now, having an idea - a new idea - is exactly the same thing. It's connecting two hitherto separate ideas in a way that generates new meaning.

Now.  Connecting different ideas isn't difficult.  You can connect cheese with motorcycles or moral courage with light green, or bananas with international co-operation. You can get any computer to make a billion random connections for you, but these new connections or juxtapositions are significant only if they generate new meaning.

So as you play, you can deliberately try inventing these random juxtapositions, and then use your intuition to tell you whether any of them seem to have significance for you.

That's the bit the computer can't do. It can produce millions of new connections, but it can't tell which one of them smells interesting.

And, of course, you'll produce some juxtapositions which are absolutely ridiculous, absurd. Good for you!

Because Edward de Bono (who invented the notion of lateral thinking) specifically suggests in his book PO: Beyond Yes and No that you can try loosening up your assumptions by playing with deliberately crazy connections. He calls such absurd ideas "Intermediate Impossibles."

And he points out the use of an "Intermediate Impossible" is completely contrary to ordinary logical thinking in which you have to be right at each stage.

It doesn't matter if the "Intermediate Impossible" is right or absurd, it can nevertheless be used as a stepping stone to another idea that is right.

Another example of how, when you're playing, nothing is wrong.

So, to summarize.  If you really don't know how to start - or if you got stuck - start generating random connections and allow your intuition to tell you if one might lead somewhere interesting.

Well, that really is all I can tell you that won't help you to be creative.

 Everything.

It isn't of course everything, but with the 2 minutes he has left after this...let's just say he spends the time well. 

Wishing you a day of juxtapositions and intuitive connections...what fun! 
It may help the week go along very nicely too.

'Til tomorrow!

~Alex