Total Anaesthesia

Tereza Schmoranz

Total Anaesthesia

How to make a readymade?

Luis Armand

20th Century British and American Art in Context

Winter 2006

'All Chess players are artists, but not all artists are chess Players.'

                                                                                                   Marcel Duchamp

In this short essay I would like to discuss the concept of “readymades” famously brought into the history of art by Marcel Duchamp. The central question we are willing to raise here is very simple but seems to be crucial for the interpretation of avant-garde art not only Duchamp’s but also art influenced by Duchamp’s work, i.e. mainly pop art and neo-dada or New Realism. What we are going to focus on here is the problem of the actual possibility to create a piece of art which would not present any aesthetic values at all, i.e. a piece of art which would be purely “anaesthetic” as Duchamp put it. Thus, we would like to call into question what seems one of Duchamp’s main ideas behind his “readymades”.[1]

In his explanation of the concept of a readymade Apropos of ‘Readymades’ written in 1961, Duchamp claimed that the chief point he wanted to establish was “that the choice of these ‘Readymades’ was never dictated by aesthetic delectation”, but “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.” Duchamp even imagined that there was the relationship of “the basic antinomy between art and “Readymades’”[2]. What we would like to show here by looking briefly at the history and theoretical in/coherence of Duchamp’s concept is that the idea of a readymade was in this respect absolutely “unsuccessful”. And moreover, it seems that it was necessarily unsuccessful. But the reason for this is not as obvious as it may seem.

On the one hand, it is certainly true that many people would agree with Duchamp that a readymade is not a work of art with aesthetic values. (Duchamp’s idea of a readymade was very much criticised for example by Clement Greenberg, an influential American art critic, who “attacked the tendency to produce art without the guidance of aesthetic judgment”[3], which was obviously the main heritage of Duchamp’s work according to pop artists and neodadaists.) On the other hand, many people would disagree with Duchamp’s opinion of his work as it is clear from the fact that Duchamp’s readymades became rapidly famous as preeminent works of art.  In any book on the history of 20^th century art, you will surely find Duchamp’s “Bicycle Wheel”, “Fountain” or “Bottle Dryer” referred to as outstanding pieces of art. Similarly, people who like Duchamp will generally be considered to have a good taste.

But we have to bear in mind that this is not something which started long after Duchamp’s death - Duchamp’s idea appears to have failed soon after he first decided to exhibit his readymades publicly (which was long after he actually made them). People immediately started to admire readymades and bought them as works of art, and that, of course, seems to be the exact opposite of Duchamp’s proclaimed intentions. At any rate, Duchamp did not mind much.

He commented on this paradoxical situation in an interview from 1967 stating that in fact he liked the contradiction. In the same place he also objected against “multiples”:

"There is an absolute contradiction, but that is what is enjoyable, isn’t it? Bringing in the idea of contradiction, the notion of contradiction, which is something that has never really been used, you see? And all the more since this use doesn’t go very far… There is something called “multiples,” that go up to hundred and fifty, two hundred copies. Now there I do object because that’s getting really too vulgar in a useless way, with things that could be interesting if they were seen by fewer people. There are too many people in this world looking. We have to reduce the number of people looking! But that’s another matter."[4]

The quote clarifies that in Duchamp’s view the idea of a readymade differs significantly from the more recent idea of multiplication (i.e. the idea of a work of art which may be multiplied endlessly so that everybody could afford to buy his or her own un/original piece). Duchamp admitted that he was also tempted to make more and more readymades, but he “realised very soon the danger of repeating indiscriminately this form of expression and decided to limit the production of "Readymades" to a small number yearly.”[5] However, there is apparently an important aspect which readymades share with multiplications, and that is their lack of uniqueness. Duchamp’s readymades certainly helped to undermine the notion that a work of art must be irreproducible and dependent on particular unique skills possessed by the individual artists. This was probably part of the ”Duchamp’s dream of going ‘beyond’ the issue of artistic quality.” In case this was his dream at all.  

The main problem we presented above, i.e. whether a work of art can ever be purely anaesthetic, was actually reflected by Duchamp himself already in his early years. In 1913 he wrote the following note:

"Can one make works of art which are not art?" [6]

This seems to be the question which started the whole Duchamp’s project of readymades (according to Duchamp’s words it was also in 1913 when he first came to the idea “to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn”[7]). It is clear, however, that the answer to the paradoxical question does not depend on the artist but on the spectator. And this paradox might be exactly what Duchamp wanted to play with. In any case, his readymades have the unbelievable power to force the spectator standing in front of a work of art exhibited in a gallery to ask: “Could this be not a work of art?”

The answer is surprisingly simple – at the moment we raise the question, the answer may never be positive any more. In other words, whenever we start asking meta-critical questions, we are necessarily approaching a work of art par excellence. Duchamp must have been aware of this.

Most of the theories on Duchamp’s readymades consider these objects “mass-produced items transformed into art by Duchamp's choice and by their displacement to museum and gallery”[8]. It is extremely important for the theories that these objects were bought by Duchamp, and then exhibited unchanged (apart from those which were labeled “assisted readymades”, "semi-readymades," "imitated rectified readymades", etc. which admit at least some kind of manipulation). But what if it were all a great mystification of an egomaniac artist who intended to do anything but to undermine the notion of an individual creator making original works of art? What if most or even all of the readymades, which were presented as manufactured objects or as just “assisted readymades” were “extensively manipulated by the artist's hand”, i.e. were not mass-produced items but “unique creations”[9]?

Believe it or not, this is not a pure thought experiment but a serious theory based on an extensive scientific research. The author of the theory, Rhonda Shearer, obviously suggests something that would mean a revolution in Duchampian studies as the “readymades” would become “unique artifacts masquerading as manufactured objects only to be recuperated by the art world (the museum, the gallery) again“, i.e. their function would be quite reverse to the one proclaimed by art critics and heir artists. Moreover, if Shearer’s theory may be proved correct in this point, why should we not accept the rest of it and not believe that “’the readymades’ changing morphology over the course of their history is part of a complex mathematical system devised by the artist under Poincaré's influence”. Would this not be an elegant explanation to why Duchamp did not exhibit his readymades publicly for about thirty years and why he did not make more of them?

The presumable total lack of aesthetic values of ready-made objects declined by the public, might have been just a trap, an ingenious chess piece whose beauty or aesthetic value is not a visual [Duchamp would say retinal]one but a mental one. The whole Duchampian work and discourse may be easily understood as a great Dadaist play of a genious who brings you into a maze and makes you ask questions like the one we raised at the beginning of this essay. Anaesthesia with its readymades is a playful Dada trick, a most elaborate one; be Shearer’s theory provable or not.