Topic two is the readymade. In this piece I will explore the questions that are asked with regards to the readymade, how our notions of the readymade have changing over time and how the idea of the readymade has translated into our current art climate.
When faced with the readymade, three questions spring to mind - what is the role of the artist, what is the role of the institute and in what ways is the readymade an 'artistic object'? Ever since Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal with R.Mutt in 1917, when it was quickly rejected by an art show, our idea of the readymade has been loaded with questions. These objects are not made by an artist's hand, they are instead chosen by the artists. Does this negate the object as being artistic at all? Is it a mass produced object that becomes artistic through an artist's idea or concept? Fountain was an iconoclastic object that aimed to upheave preconceived notions about the art object, artist and gallery space, if anything in a mocking way of the current bourgeoisie artistic values. This idea of 'iconoclasm' is faced when we look at how the object is represented now. Peter Burger writes in his Theory of the Avant-Garde that what was once iconoclastic and revolutionary now becomes institutionalised and canonical. When the intention of a readymade is to be iconoclastic, does this concept get broken down when the institute finally accepts the artistic authority of the object?
Joseph Kosuth states that the role of the artist is now to ask questions. Done so explicitly by Duchamp, the ideas and questions raised by the readymade have filtered into a more modern practice, one which has different idealistic notions about the readymade. Kosuth himself asks questions about readymade objects - in his Shovel piece, which is recreated in each venue (which leads us to the realisation that with a mass produced 'readymade' there is no original) the actual object, a photo of the object and a definition of the object are placed next to one another - they are all the same but different. In a gallery space, the readymade problematizes its own display. Instead of representing something in the way that a painting or a sculpture would, we are instead faced with a re-presenting of an everyday object. And if the original is lost, as in Duchamp's In Advance of a Broken Arm, a lone shovel, then the object may need to be remade. Unlike Kosuth's shovel, a new one is not used in each venue, and instead a new shovel was fabricated - this is another problem in terms of the 'concept' of the readymade. If an object has to be fabricated to the specific requirements of an object before hand, the whole idea of a readymade is diminished.
No longer are artists trying to actively disrupt the institute - they are questioning what we see every day, the consumerist culture that we live in and how we react to it and the objects we face. Jasper John's uses everyday motif's such as targets or the American flag, 'readymade' images, and uses them as the subject matter for his work. When viewing these objects that we see regularly in our everyday life, we are faced with an uncanny recognition. Taking the concept of the readymade a step further with his notion of the 'all readymade', Ellsworth Kelly creates works that take inspiration from life in much the same way as Johns. However, instead of using overly visual and recognisable motifs, we are faced with subtle snippets of window frames or bus stop signs. These 'readymade' shapes are found everywhere - very much like Duchamp's urinal. Yet whilst these objects are designed to be impassive, detached and purged of artistic discourse, Rosalind Krauss offers her Freudian influenced thoughts that something deeper may lay beneath the impassive exterie of these objects. In Freudian theory, seemingly meaningless behaviour is actually embedded in deeper meaning - following this theory, is it possible that these objects tell us more?
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