Dick's Art Blog

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“A point that I want very much to establish is that the choice of these ‘readymades’ was never dictated by aesthetic delectation. The choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste in fact a complete anaesthesia. One important characteristic was the short sentence which I occasionally inscribed on the ‘readymade.’ That sentence instead of describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal. Sometimes I would add a graphic detail of presentation which, in order to satisfy my craving for alliterations, would be called ‘readymade aided.’ At another time, wanted to expose the basic anatomy between art and ‘readymades,’ I imagined a reciprocal readymade: use a Rembrandt as an ironing board! I realized very soon the danger of repeating indiscriminately this form of expression and decided to limit the productions of ‘readymades’ to a small number yearly. I was aware at that time, that for the spectator even more than for the artist, art is a habit forming drug and I wanted to protect my ‘readymades’ against such a contamination. Another aspect of the ‘readymade’ is its lack of uniqueness. The replica of the ‘readymade’ delivering the same message. In fact nearly every one of the ‘readymades’ existing today is not original in the conventional sense.” (Marcel Duchamp)

“In later years he insisted that there was ‘no beauty, no ugliness, nothing particularly aesthetic’ about the readymades, so whatever the criteria for selection, aesthetic taste was to play no role. Nothing would distinguish a set of canonical readymades from a set of nondescript household objects, set out for purpose of garage sale. Nothing would prompt ordinary persons to think of them as art – which is part of what makes them intoxicating, conceptually speaking, as art. Without references to the readymade, neither the art history of the twentieth century nor [the] contemporary philosophy of art can be grasped. Each of the readymades has generated whole libraries of interpretation. The typewriter cover, for example, introduced the idea of ’soft sculpture’, and the pun that ‘Underwood’ makes with the French expression sous bois – a traditional genre of landscape – must have been irresistible to Duchamp’s spirit of linguistic play.” (Arthur Danto)

“I really enjoy the brutality of the ready made, and the way some objects make it and others don’t… just the sheer choice fascinates me, and the why… it’s like somehow reading a symptom in a complex or not so complex disease or ailment.. We are trained to look at things on walls so I utilize this trick.” (Tao Wells)

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