yes its quite a mouthful and i only stumbled over it again (and it was in a fuzzy byzantine context) reading Jerry Saltz's brilliant article "Idol Thoughts: Duchamps's Divine Urinal" in the March 2006 issue of Modern Painters. He effortlessly manages to traverse the issues of religion and iconoclasm and suggest a divine inversion and liberation in Duchamp's famous piss troff, Fountain.
Much has been written about Fountain and Duchamps Readymades- his great influence on modernism and contemporary conceptual art practice, his so called "anti art" and anti establishment ethos, his inventiveness, cleverness, etc but I have never read anything in which religious and spiritual agency is located in his work. It is definantly debatable but far be it from me to be the one to challenge Jerry Saltz. Anyway listen to this, its at the end of the article
"In a sense, Fountain is what is called an acheropoietoi, an image not shaped by the hands of an artist. it brings us with an original that is still an original but that also exists in an altered philosophical and metaphysical state. it is a manifestation of a sort of kantian sublime: a work of art that that transcends a form but is also intelligible, an object that strikes down an idea while allowing it to spring up stronger. Its presence is grace"
I wish i was moved to this sublime state in witnessing some of the found object/readymade inspired contemporary art shows around Melbourne...its got to the point where if i ever see another bit of stick and flouro string I'm going to fly into a murderous rage. I guess some of these works really are "anti-art" although I think even this may be reading too much into it..often its just laziness and that just makes me feel depressed. Lets look at some more happy (kinda old) encounters
This is the one where he dismantled this shed made it into a boat sailed it down the rhine and then made it into a shed again....your head just kind of explodes with mathematical loops,zen kohans, theories on modernity and industrialisation, huck finn, origin and reproduction, amish people..but mainly just delight!
Looks cosy huh? Must smell all nice..like greasy boat wood and dirty rivers....before the conservators at the Tate got to it that is.
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