Dada & Surrealism
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Dada Duchamp and the Ready-Mades
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Art as Concept: In Advance of the Broken Arm
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Duchamp's Fountain
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Duchamp's Boite-en-valise (the red box), series F
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Arp, Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance)
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Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany
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Schwitters, Merzbild 32A, The Cherry Picture
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Klee, Twittering Machine
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Giacometti, The Palace at 4am
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Giacometti, City Square
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Magritte, The Treachery of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe)
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Dali, The Persistence of Memory
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Dali, Metamorphosis of Narcissus
Art as Concept: In Advance of the Broken Arm Art as Concept: Duchamp's Shovel Marcel Duchamp, In Advance of the Broken Arm, 1964 (fourth version, after lost original of November 1915) (MoMA) A conversation with Sal Khan & Steven Zucker
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- In the years during the First World War,
- this art movement called 'Dada' began.
- How do you spell that?
- That is D-a-d-a.
- It is really a nonsense word.
- The idea was to create a kind of anti-art.
- To kind of challenge what art was.
- The world was in flames,
- the war was raging across Europe
- and artists didn't want to have any part of it.
- They wanted to show how absurd and how dangerous
- the world had gotten.
- And one of the artists who was a Dada artist
- His name was Marcel Duchamp.
- He had to create what we call 'Ready-Mades'
- or what he called Ready-Mades.
- Some of them were 'Assisted Ready-Mades'
- where he would take two objects that existed in the world
- and put them together,
- and some objects were just pure Ready-Mades.
- And one of my favorites is called
- "In Advance of a Broken Arm"
- and we're looking at it on the left here.
- And you had to explicitly tell me
- that it was the one on the left.
- Yes I did! (he laughs)
- So, just to make this clear, this is
- In Advance of a Broken Arm.
- That's exactly right.
- And you had to point that out
- because we have a very similar piece
- on the right side here
- which I just got off of Amazon,
- which is a snow shovel.
- - And really they're not much different at all, are they?
- No, they both seem like snow shovels.
- They are both snow shovels,
- except Duchamp has taken his out of the garage
- or out of the hardware store
- and relocated it, sort of reframed it
- and said, "No, this is a Ready-Made."...
- ..." This is something to look at..."
- "...and understand within an aesthetic sphere."
- I'm thinking what I think many people are thinking,
- Okay, he did that, and it seems
- like what he did was a very cynical act.
- Which was, like, "here's art for you, all you jokers!"
- "I'm going to go buy a snow shovel..."
- "...and stick it in a museum and --"
- I don't know, I feel like he's like laughing at people.
- I think that there is definitely cynicism here,
- and I think that this is
- very much related to the objectives of Dada
- which was to undermine the way in which we valued art,
- the way in which we understood art,
- saying that the world had become a place of chaos
- and a kind of dangerous chaos, and
- the artist wanted in some ways
- have nothing to do with that any longer.
- So how can I most undermine
- and in a sense destroy the way
- in which we had defined art?
- To create a kind of anti-art?
- I think that's exactly right.
- And was he like the first person?
- Because you know we just talked about Warhol,
- and we said, if now someone took a piece of advertising
- and stuck it in a museum
- it would feel very derivative,
- but Warhol did that a while after Duchamp.
- So to some degree
- it feels like now Warhal is derivative,
- because Duchamp, --
- you know, Warhol had to actually do some work,
- he like actually painted a soup can,
- but this guy, I mean, he's way ahead of his time,
- he literally just bought a snow shovel
- and showed up.
- Duchamp would say however,
- that finding a perfect Ready-Made
- wasn't an easy thing.
- He went on a hunt
- and most objects did not suit his definition
- of what a perfect Ready-Made would be.
- You know he has created a kind of narrative here.
- I mean, what do you think of
- when you put that snow shovel together with the title?
- To me, it looks like a parody.
- In Advance of a Broken Arm...
- Yeah, he went and bought a snow shovel
- and he called it In Advance of a Broken Arm,
- which is a very, kind of fancy-sounding title,
- which makes you think a little bit,
- but yeah, I , er, yeah
- (they giggle)
- So I think you're absolutely right,
- I think it's impossible,
- And here's the even more absurd part:
- we're looking at a photograph,
- not even of the original In Advance of a Broken Arm,
- but a later snow shovel
- he replaced the original with
- after the first had been lost,
- perhaps to a snow storm!
- O yeah here we read:
- "August 1964,"
- "Fourth version after lost original of November 1915"
- So I guess --
- Well, can you even have an original?
- Well exactly, because there's probably
- a hundred of those originals.
- So, let's play this out for a moment.
- Imagine that this came up to auction
- and it went to Sotheby's or Christie's,
- it went to one of the big auction houses
- and it's a Duchamp,
- this important example of Dada.
- And the auction is going to start
- at some very high numbers right?
- It's going to start at 2 million dollars.
- Is that really what this might go for?
- Er, these are priceless objects.
- Except that somebody could walk into Home Depot
- or go onto Amazon
- or in their grandfather's barn or something
- And imagine they could get
- past the guard at Christie's
- and walk into the showroom
- with their own snow shovel
- and there would be no difference, physically,
- between the snow shovel
- that is up on the podium
- that is for sale, for auction,
- and that is reaching this astronomical figure
- versus the snow shovel
- that's worth 29,99.
- So that's a fascinating question,
- because they are physically identical snow shovels
- and one was touched by Duchamp
- and placed in a museum
- and another 1,000 were not
- and because of that,
- this one could go for millions.
- You started off by saying
- "is Duchamp being cynical"?
- I think in some ways he really is.
- He is trying to make, in a sense,
- the apparatus of the art market transparent,
- he is trying to force us to grapple with
- "how do we define what art is?"
- and how it's important.
- And maybe that our values are misplaced
- in some way.
- But he is also pointing toward something else
- which is that art is not necessarily
- in the 20th century,
- located in the practice of its making,
- located in the proficiency of the artist
- and their brush work,
- but it is located in the symbolic language
- that art can invoke.
- In the way that art
- can transform the way
- that we see the world.
- So...
- I am actually becoming a bit of a fan
- of Duchamp.
- But I think there is...
- O and I'm also thinking of becoming
- an avant-garde artist.
- I want to do an art installation
- called "Breath Of Air".
- Which is: I will go to that location
- that little part of volume
- and I will just exhale, right there.
- And I will put a little plaque or something
- saying "Salman has exhaled at this point"
- That would push thinking at art.
- Art that doesn't even exist!
- You know what?
- You missed your moment.
- Because art was made like that
- in the 1970's and 80's.
- Someone has allready done that?
- Someone has allready created art that doesn't exist?
- - Or, art that exists as a performative act.
- O, yeah, but...
- yeah.
- This is a difficult one.
- I'm er,
- I mean...
- yeah.
- (they laugh)
- This is about as tough as it gets.
- What is your take on it?
- I mean, In Advance of a Broken Arm.
- It does...
- I, I agree with everything you said
- that, like, he introduced this,
- he is challenging people's notion of art,
- challenging the art market,
- challenging all of these
- but in my mind it seems
- in a very cynical way.
- That 'I'm going to put a very mundane object on there,
- make people bid on it
- and think of it as art,
- but...
- What do you make of this name
- "Advance of a Broken Arm"?
- And that it gets a special showcase
- and the fact that it costs the same
- as a 5 dollar snow shovel from Home Depot?
- You know, when we think about poetry for example
- we don't worry about the cost of the typeface
- we think about
- where that poetry brings us
- emotionally and intellectually.
- It transforms us, it changes us.
- And so, it is interesting that in the visual arts
- we are still so tied to the handicraft.
- Duchamp is really distancing art
- from the handicraft
- and making it a purely conceptual process.
- So he is really forcing that issue
- I think in an important way.
- That has really challenged the 20th century
- and made contemporary art possible.
- That is interesting
- So what you are saying is that
- he is -- like poetry
- Poetry is really about the idea of poetry
- someone can copy and paste that
- and we can all share that poetry
- there is no physical words there
- And he kind of did the same
- It's the idea
- thats why he was able to take another shovel
- and do it again and again.
- But still... We say that but
- at the same time, the art market
- does not necessarily view it that way.
- They view this shovel as somehow being holy
- versus the other shovel
- that was made at the same assembly line
- that is nowhere near as holy.
- I think that is exactly right
- and in some ways, Duchamp failed.
- In some ways, I think the avarice
- of the art market has prevailed
- despite his attempt to undermine it.
- We still would auction it at a very high price
- we still differentiate the 2 shovels
- and we would still value one
- over the other
- In a sence we heroicise the object
- that is somehow connected
- to the conceptual
- even though I think Duchamp
- was really focussed on
- seperating those things.
- And what about--
- just going back to the name
- I mean I can kind of buy
- some of this
- in that he is challenging what is art
- and this idea
- of putting focus on something like this,
- but at the same time it seems like
- the title is a little bit uppity.
- Why didn't he just call it 'Snow Shovel'?
- Or just 'blank'?
- Why did he have to say
- "In Advance of a Broken Arm"?
- I will not pretend to know
- what his motivations were
- but I think that the cynicism we spoke of before
- is exactly his point here.
- Some of my students have said
- they can imagine someone slipped on the ice
- and broke their arm.
- Oh, I could imagine,
- you could call this 'In Advance of a Cherry Pie"
- I can imagine that after working a long day
- shoveling snow I will go eat a cherry pie.
- I think that notion of absurdity
- was central to Duchamp's practice
- and what he was interested in.
- I think he wanted us to bump up against
- the absurdity of that title
- and to be challenged by it.
- Fascinating.
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