In 2004, Gordon's Gin, sponsor of the Turner prize, polled 500 leading dealers, critics, artists, and curators about what was "the most influential work of art in the 20th C.", and the winner, by a landslide of 64%, was Duchamp's "Fountain"
But it appears that Duchamp was trying to present an example of something that would systematically disqualify as art - as discussed here by P.N. Humble: http://bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/22/1/52 So Dutton steps in to "throw light" on this question by analyzing pieces using the 12 cluster criteria he presented in chapter 3. And here are the results: 1. Direct pleasure: Yes (as a Dadaist gesture) , No (as a disagreeable piece of plumbing) 2. Skill and virtuosity: Yes and No (for the same reasons given above) 3. Recognizable style : No 4. Novelty and creativity: Yes - and even after a hundred years , it continues to astonish 5. Criticism: Does it exist alongside some kind of critical language of judgment and appreciation? Yes - in spades. 6. Representation:Not in the Aristotelian sense 7. Special Focus: Is it bracketed off from ordinary life? Yes -- it has been given a plinth and a title 8. Expressive Individuality: Yes and No for the same reasons given for #1 9. Emotional saturation: Yes (it delights cognoscenti and angers everyone else). but also No - snce the object itself embodies and expresses no emotion. 10.Intellectual Challenge: Yes - but only regarding philosophy and art history, not the object itself 11.Art Tradition and institutions: Is it given significance by its place in the history and traditions of art? Yes - in spades. Though Dutton asserts that, contrary to the Institutional Theory, this criterion is neither necessary nor sufficient. 12.Imaginative Experience: Art happens in a make-believe world, the theater of the imagination. -- No - "unless every stimulating book on art theory would be a work of art" And finally, we have Duchamp's own statement when asked about the origins of the readymade "Please note that I didn't want to make a work of art out of it..the word "readymade thrust itself upon me then. It seemed perfect for those things that weren't works of art, that weren't sketches, and to which no art terms applied. That's why I was tempted to make them" But considering the opiniion of the vast majorithy of experts -- as well as the mostly positive tally registered above -- Dutton delivers a resounding "Yes,Fountain is a work of art", successful not just for challenging the conventional artworld of 1915, but for "effectively challenging our evolutionary response system" Which is why it endures. But has it really endured ?-- or did it's importance just temporarily skyrocket in the later decades of the last century? I suspect that if experts had been polled any earlier than 1965, "Fountain" wouldn't have even made the top 100. Perhaps, rather than challenging our "evolutionary response system", "Fountain" is the most effective symbol of the postwar collapse of high culture. Dutton's analysis cannot address that issue because it is strictly a-historical, and though his analysis presents many relevant issues, it can't take them very far because none of those "cluster criteria" are necessary, sufficient, or prioritized. So, for example, it may well be that a Dadaist gesture gives pleasure to some people -- but then so do burning buildings, and the the work of an arsonist would qualify for more than half of Dutton's criteria. (and it might involve them all if the arsonist had skillfully and controversially torched a major art museum) And there's also some especially murky thought regarding my favorite criterion, #9 (Emotional saturation) where Dutton distinguishes between that which provokes emotion that which embodies and expresses it. How can anyone tell the difference? Perhaps, Dutton should have required that an art work be considered more important than any response to it -- but that would be something other than just one more "cluster criterion), and, of course, that would controversially separate the contemporary art world from all the others. Buy he does note that "jokes can only be laughed at once, having been done, they cannot be done again with anything like Duchampian impact" So Dutton is willing to attack the world of contemporary art institutions anyway, serving up the example of a Dadaist jesture from the 1960's, Piero Manzoni's "Merda d'artista" and mocking the Tate's "humorless defense" of its recent purchase of 'Can 004" as a "seminal work" (while also, mischievously noting that due to improper canning technique, more r than half of Manzoni's precious tin cans have exploded) ____________________________________________________________ Hotel Don't stay in a roach motel. Click here to find great deals on hotels. http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/c?cp=dkxtFi1TW3G9LvaAq-rSkwAAJz6c l_zTaptgNR5c8Mer1v9kAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATRAAAAAA=
