Page 52 - Studio International - January February 1975

matter. Everything depends on the theory may not be able to comprehend Rather than wanting to make his art an
viewer; he alone can supply the 'missing this, but every artist is more or less agent for changing the world, it would be
link', bridge the gap between the material aware of it. Thus Duchamp spoke of that truer to say that he concealed it. He
form of the work and its immaterial and `missing link' between the materiality of a turned to art in solitude, in silence, so
thus never expressed meaning. work of art and its artistic significance. that with its help he could clarify,
Here Duchamp is apparently claiming In that lies the essence of the creative understand and know his own life. It was
two contradictory things. On the one process, the 'coefficient' that makes art obvious to him that in this society, a
hand, the material work of art is an art. product of European civilization, art
absolute necessity for him. It is only cannot continue, but rather than protest
through actually creating it that the 10. Duchamp's relationship to he chose to maintain a consistent distance
artist attains that 'mediumistic state' that Surrealism was never unambiguous. from it. He was a Dadaist among
brings him genuine artistic experience. Though he took part in surrealistic Surrealists, but his was not the stormy
On the other hand, however, the work of exhibitions and even designed their Dada of Hausmann or Tzara, it was not
art never contains this experience within installation, he never signed any of the `nihilism', as his work was later
itself: it can only be a mute appeal to the numerous declarations issued by the described,69 but rather a 'metaphysical
viewer to try, through the work, to come surrealist group. For the entire period attitude'.70 He was an ascetic, not a
to the same experience. It is not when they were most active, he revolutionary. In his last statement of
surprising that this text of Duchamp's led consistently maintained an inner principles, made in 1961," he made his
Terry Atkinson to write a long polemic in distance from them. He never declared position clear : 'The great artist of
Art-Language, in which Duchamp his affinity with Rimbaud, but rather tomorrow will go underground,' he said.
appears as a hapless man, artistically, with Laforgue, Mallarmé, Roussel and Theories of art wander aimlessly in and
intellectually and morally inferior: Redon. The surrealist conception of art out of insoluble contradictions because
Many people believe him to be a great never inspired Duchamp, and when they continue to consider art merely as a
thinker and I believe him to be an Surrealism was at its height, he devoted way of representing the world or human
iconoclast whose mania for iconoclasm his time to activities that were far experience. But art does not represent or
and the individual position robbed him removed from surrealist aesthetics : describe. It is neither a report on the
of any penetrative power of judgement optical experiments, mathematical world nor a statement about it. It asserts
he might have had.64 investigations of roulette, and nothing; it passes no judgement. It does
And Atkinson goes on to claim that chess. His kinship to Surrealism was not present us with some truth, it gives us
Duchamp's statement on the creative act above all a kinship to Breton, but it is no advice. It is not a way of knowing nor a
is mere theological diplomacy such as we significant that he defines his closeness to means of enlightenment. It points in a
(alas!) find in Leibniz. Breton in terms of the notion of an direction opposite to logic and ethics:
Atkinson is the victim of his own intelligence 'enlarged, stretched, not to the world but away from it. In
theorizing and the meaning of Duchamp's extended' 65 - whereas Breton himself modern art, the experience of emptiness,
text thus escaped him entirely. Art is not proclaimed the automatic releasing of silence, amorphism, nothingness,
and cannot be spun out of theory. An subscious activity. Nor was acosmia, continually reoccurs — in
artist does not create because he knows Duchamp's remark to Breton (in a letter Mallarmé, Cage, Malevich, Picabia,
something, because he has ideas he would in 1953) that 'my unconscious is dumb, Rilke. This experience probably has its
like to realize, express or communicate. just like any unconscious' without its own hieroglyph in the allegorical language
He creates because he does not know point.66 It was not until Breton's death of Duchamp's Large Glass as well. It is
something, and because he feels this lack that the reticent Duchamp revealed the very likely that most mysterious part of
of knowledge as a great personal lack, even essence of his relationship to him. As he the work, the amorphous cloud — which,
a misfortune. He is seeking something told Parinaud, by the way, is prefigured several times in
he knows is escaping his intellect, I have never known a man who had a earlier works. Three openings in it, the
something in terms of which his intellect greater capacity for love. He was the Draft Pistons, lead into emptiness. They
prostitution.67
is helpless. If he chooses the methods of lover of love in a world that believes in are emblems of accident through which,
artistic creation, it is because it is the into our completed and ordered world,
only way that somehow conforms to This, by the way, is an argument the wind from outside blows — from the
what he is after, the only way he can supremely significant for Duchamp, who region of the unwordly, from eternity.
expand his consciousness so that he can always protected himself with a mask of Recently, the idea of acosmia has been
possess, reveal, or at least approach his intellectual irony, a man for whom life reappearing more and more urgently :
goal. To put himself at the mercy of his and art were supposed to be merely a No texture .. . No forms. No design.
work means, for the artist, to put himself `distraction'. No colours. No light. No space. No
at the mercy of experience where the Whenever Duchamp was required to time. No size or scale. No movement.
category of mere reason is no longer characterize his art, he did so in No object, no subject, no matter. No
enough, where he must go further to an different terms than the surrealists used symbols, images, visions or ready-
area in which he will no longer be guided of themselves. In 1963, William Seitz mades. Neither pleasure nor pain. (Ad
by logic, but only by inevitability, no asked him what adjective he would use to Reinhardt) 72
longer by deliberation, but only by describe his work. It is not political, he Art returns man from the world to the
intuition. said; does it then have an aesthetic or primal act of consciousness, before the
It is in this sense that the artist is like a philosophical significance ? 'No, no,' world that is given, before existence that
`mediumistic being'. His new experience replied Duchamp without hesitation, is imposed on him, before entities, and
does not derive from reason. But it is not `Metaphysical, if any.'68 The word before being himself. It returns that
enough to call it irrational. If dreams, love `metaphysical' does not belong in Breton's imperishable moment when human
and madness belong to the irrational, then vocabulary. Breton was a self-possessed consciousness approaches the world from
artistic experience is something else. and genuine materialist in the sense that, unworldliness, being from un-being. Art
There can be no doubt that it takes place for him, the aim of art was to capture the is 'fascination', as Blanchot says;
in the clearness of consciousness: thus fullness of life on earth such that it would through it, the world is revealed to us in
Duchamp was always against painting embrace even that deep level of life that the glare of consciousness. It is primal
being considered some manifestation of he called 'the miraculous' and later, consciousness; it is at the same time a
instinct and demanded that it be located `love'. He was against rationalism because primal prayer.
in the 'grey matter of the brain', that it be rationalism was capable of giving only an
an 'idea'. The particular nature of incomplete picture, a mere schema of 11. Various aesthetic systems point on
artistic creation consists in the fact that it reality. The life forces that bore reality the one hand to the rationality and logic
does take place in our material world and had to be sought elsewhere, beneath that of a work of art, and on the other hand
yet at the same time it somehow escapes superficial rationality. He wanted art to to its irrationality and alogic; to its
it; it speaks to our life here and yet it transform life, he wanted human life and deliberately structured form on the one
seems not to be of it. There is always human society to be organized to give hand, and to its amorphousness on the
something in it that is incomprehensible, those life forces every possible freedom. other. They all reduce the work of art to
paradoxical, absurd, scandalous. Art But did Duchamp want to transform life ? its materiality. But a work of art is a
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