“The Importance of Context Used as a Stage to Display Art”

Although Marcel Duchamp’s The Fountain was criticized for being a stolen urinal that Duchamp merely wrote initials on to make “art,” other conceptual artists who have taken Duchamp’s work to heart claim that the process of presenting an object can be considered art all in itself. Duchamp’s presentation of The Fountain forces a viewer to question what inspired the artist to create such an image, and what the process of building the image entailed. According to artist Fred Wilson, conceptual art is all about pushing art out of its normal boundaries: “‘It’s a way, once I have people disarmed to get them to push past their comfort zone’” (Buskirk 188). Basically, Duchamp not only valued the final product of his art work, but he valued the process of getting to the final product much more. Although many conceptual artists were inspired by Duchamp’s ability to designate objects as art only because of the work that went into creating them, more modern day conceptual artists incorporate Duchamp’s elements of conceptual art into their work in order to prove this belief and to make a shocking statement.

Within Martha Buskirk’s interview with conceptual artist, Fred Wilson, Buskirk touches upon the stark differences between museum exhibits and conceptual art exhibits. Wilson and Buskirk both came to the conclusion that art in a museum is something that all visitors can predict before they even see it. A museum is structured in a way that is very predictable to visitors and thus, there is very little shock factor. According to Wilson, when a person visits an art museum they: “‘expect some form of universal truth or knowledge…’” (Buskirk 187). However, through Wilson’s personal art exhibits, he claims that he withholds these truths and therefore allows an audience to really question the process behind his pieces. Within museum exhibits, curators create pieces of art that people will immediately understand and that has a definite purpose. Wilson, on the other hand, creates pieces that allow the freedom to really think about the piece and the process of making the piece, in order to give the audience a truly shocking experience. Wilson explains, “‘I’m always trying to push the exhibitions farther than I would expect a museum curator to go…’” (Buskirk 187). For example, Wilson once designed a room made entirely out of black and white squares. The process of making this exhibit took a lot of time and effort, and the actually designing of this piece of “art,” became more valuable to Wilson than the actual final product was. However, the room was already there, it was just Wilson’s redesign of the room that made it “art.” It is through pieces like this that Wilson models Duchamp’s theory of starting out with an initial design (that could be already used by another artist) and creating an innovative idea out of it. Wilson describes this process: “‘One could say that Conceptual art created a space in which people could understand the issues that you have dealt with in your work’” (Buskirk 189). In other words, Wilson took Duchamp’s idea that the process of creating a piece of art, or taking ideas from a past artist, is the most important part of the process.

Similarly, artist Louise Lawler, used Duchamp’s ideology that how and artist presents his or her work is quite possibly the most important aspect of the exhibit itself. Although Lawler didn’t realize this while she was young in art school, she eventually came to partial agreement with this concept: “‘One particularly important issue is the degree to which he thought very carefully about the nature of the work of art and how its meaning is shaped by the context in which it is presented’” (Buskirk 183). Lawler only developed a sort of reverence or relationship with Duchamp’s work later in life because she believed that: “‘there are many issues concerning context that can be referenced before and since Duchamp. Some attempt to eliminate it as a codified situation and others to exacerbate and make more evident in its conventions’” (Buskirk 184). Basically, Lawler explains that while some artists believe context is what makes the art, “art,” other artists believe that context take away from the actual piece itself. Therefore, Lawler has worked hard to try to identify with what ideology she believed in. Although she respects Duchamp for his work, she does not incorporate all of his practices into her own work. Collaboration of ideas is also a driving force behind Lawler’s works. In fact, within Lawler and Allan McDollum’s exhibit Ideal Settings for Presentation and Display, they collaborated in order to create a “show-room” piece that would emphasize the lighting and the context of the exhibit over the actually objects being displayed. Thus, the stage lights, pedestals and the back-drop became the main attraction within this work of “art.” This collaboration with McDollum allowed Lawler to focus more on Duchamp’s ideals because: “‘Collaborations can produce a shift in focus and concerns…’” (Buskirk 184). Basically, it took Lawler a period of experimenting and collaborating in order to truly appreciate Duchamp’s radical ideas.

Within Martha Buskierk’s interview with conceptual artist Sherrie Levine, Levine admits that she has taken Duchamp’s process of turning an original “readymade” into a fabricated “readymade.” In other words, you take an original object that was used within an exhibit, and make copies of the original. Thus, in order to do this, artists often take pieces of other artists’ artwork in order to create their own unique pieces. In Levine’s case, she bought a pair of shoes at a secondhand store and in order to make them art, she had to display them. Buskirk mentions, “‘It’s interesting that the shoes were in this very tenuous state between being art and not being art…’” (Buskirk 178). The whole purpose of this exhibit is to emphasize materiality in modern day society and to create an artistic scene that she wanted to view. Levine explains, “‘I always make things that I want to look at. Objects that help me understand something or experience something that I didn’t before’” (Buskirk 178). Levine learned to incorporate her own ideas with those of other artists’.

Another contemporary artist, Bruce Conner, used less of his own ideas and mimicked Duchamp in order to make a shocking statement. Conner suggested that Duchamp’s work was all about questioning. He explains, “‘I still feel that he dealt with enigmas and arbitrariness in the world with a sharp analytical mind’” (Buskirk 57). So, he used this curiosity in order to portray his own works with a lot of Duchamp references involved. For one, because Duchamp liked to sign things that he did not create, Conner came up with the idea to create a rubber stamp with his signature because he refused to sign anything. His partner in the project, Charles Alan, tried to set up a similar exhibit to a past one of Duchamp’s and would stamp Conner’s name. However, this exhibit never took place because Alan thought it wasn’t moral and Conner did not want to offend Duchamp. But, this image of taking credit for someone else’s “original” comes up again within Conner’s work. The most important aspect taken by Conner would be the idea of questioning.

Lastly, Ed Ruscha explained that the most valuable aspect he learned from Duchamp would be the concept of turning ordinary objects into something spectacular and exciting. Duchamp turned wheels, metal, and other random objects into something that created a shock-value for onlookers and this method went against traditional art. Ruscha also values the fact that he truly became a rebel within the art world and this inspired other young artists to step outside of the traditional art sphere in order to create something amazing and awe-inspiring. Thus, within his own work, he took past pieces of art that Duchamp made and added his own twist to them. Within The Marcel Duchamp Travelling Box, he turns an ordinary image into something very odd. Ruscha began to appreciate ordinary objects and brainstormed how to turn them into art.

Overall, Duchamp did have a major affect on aspiring conceptual artists. His belief that context and preparation were the main values behind a piece of art changed the way people and other artists viewed art work in general. The most important aspect that Duchamp’s legacy left artists and viewers alike would be to experience art during its creation process and to never be afraid to create something out of the ordinary-from an ordinary object.