Page 36 - Studio International - June 1966

Right ever happens could have been completely different. Look
Ready-made, Girl with bedstead at those poor things from Africa (pointing to the African
(Apolinère enameled) 1916-17
Painted tin advertisement for and pre-Columbian sculptures), so important in our lives.
Sapolin Enamel, altered and We've made modern art of them.'
added to by the artist What, I asked, does he mean when he sometimes refers
9 1/4 x 13 1/4 in.
Philadelphia Museum of Art to 'bad art' and 'good art' ?
(Arensberg Collection) `There is bad art, only people forget it if they can. It's
art anyway. The St Sulpice images, for instance. Or
Tanagras : the Tanagras were bad Greek art that are
now worth a lot. Generally it's bad art that becomes good.
The simplest thing is to take a thing disliked and re-
habilitate it. A group of four or five men can do this very
easily. Part of the shock of a new movement is just that.'
You've suggested, I continued, that artists today are
corruptible and too much involved in commercialization
to amount to much. In that case, why do you continue
to say you are interested in artists, not art?
`Because artists are the only people who have a chance
to become citizens of the world, to make a good world to
live in. They are disengaged and ready for freedom.'
Who is an artist? Anyone who says he is? Duchamp
laughed good naturedly : 'Nowadays I suppose the answer
would have to be, Yes. It is hard to define, but we know
what we mean. In a way the artist is no longer an artist.
He is some sort of missionary. Art has replaced religion
and people have the same sort of respectful attitude to
art that they once had for religion. Art is the only thing
left for people who don't give science the last word. Let's
say I have a professional sympathy for the artist.'
To change the subject, I continued: You have author-
ized the manufacture of replicas of your original ready-
mades. Is that a contradiction of your original premise?
`I like the idea. I've never had a special respect for
enshrined art. The minute people say 'It's an outrage',
I'm ready to do it. It tempts me. Here, I'm an anti-
Cartesian. It's an amusing form of giving light meaning
Above left mercialized. Too commercialized. It wasn't that way in instead of heavy serious meaning. I have to defend my-
Ready-made, Ball of twine 1916 the days of the kings. (Don't make me into a monarchist !) self. Seriousness and importance are my main enemies.'
Ball of twine in brass frame
'assisted' by the artist Such a levelling as we have now may not engender many What, I asked, does he think of Richard Hamilton's
Height 5 in. geniuses.' professorial analysis of the Bottle Dryer; his discussion of
Philadelphia Museum of Art But, I interrupted, I've always thought you more or less the 'symmetry', etc. ?
(Arensberg Collection)
believed in genius, in which case all this brouhaha would `Symmetry was only a point in my life. Since asymmetry
Above right not inhibit the engendering of genius. dominated from 1870, I re-introduced symmetry in order
Pocket chessboard c. 1943 `No, no. Top minds can't come up in such circumstances. to use something not accepted at the time. If you think of
Assisted Ready-made;
leather and celluloid A genius is not made by the mind itself. It is made by the the kind of distorting for distorting's sake indulged in by
6 1/2 x 4 1/4 in. onlooker. The public needs a top mind and makes it. Matisse.... He did it for pleasure, for the fun of it. He was
The Mary Sisler Collection
Anything can be on top. Genius is an invention of man, right to do it, but I have to laugh at the great theories
just like God.' around it. Yes, he was retinal all right. But the retina is
You've said that success is demoralizing. Do you feel only a door that you open to go further.'
demoralized ? I asked Duchamp whether he had anything to say about
`Oh, I've never had success. Not normal success. My the extensive linking of art with technology, and the at-
first one-man show was two years ago in Pasadena when tempts to make him a progenitor of the tendency.
I was 75 years old. Even then, it wasn't very important. `They have to get somebody as a progenitor so as not to
But then, what's important to the onlooker now is always look as though they invent it all by themselves. Makes a
changed by the second onlooker twenty-five or seventy- better package. But technology: art will be sunk or
five years from now. Look at Gautier for instance. Every- drowned by technology. Look, I'll show you an example.'
body read him, and he was very important, but who Duchamp then plugged in a framed box in which elec-
reads him now? Every few years there's a revision. We tric heat acts on the liquid and crystals within, making
make El Greco what we want him to be. An æuvre by them surge up in a sea-green orgy of movement.
itself doesn't exist, it's an optical illusion. It's only made `This is a work by Paul Matisse, Matisse's grandson, who
to be seen by the people who look at it. The poor medium does not regard himself as an artist. In fact, he intends to
is only gratuitous. You could invent a false artist. What- manufacture this, and you'll probably see it in every