Re: [microsound] Mr Mutt

[Ian Andrews <i.andrews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>> i agree with all of this except the conclusion: duchamp did not try to
>> raise a political/economic issue (he usually never did in his art):
>> he wanted to sell the piece!
>and 'wanting to sell the piece' (which wasn't his intention) immediately
>places the issue square into the arena of politics and economics...

 The show that Duchamp entered the urinal in, under the name of R. Mutt was
not a regular art establishment show as we know them. The society (whose
name escapes me) that ran the show had the high ideal that anyone could be
an artist and that no art should be prejudiced simply becuase the artist
was unknown.  Part of Duchamps intention was to push these ideals to the
limit by entering something which, at the time could not be regarded as
art, and by an artist who was not only totaly unknown but also had a name
which did not fit well with the tradition of "romantic" proper names
associated with artists.

>> and that's why he got mad at the organizers and started making
>> all the replicas: to sell more.
>because any replication of the original object changes his statement from a
>general 'fuck the art establishment' to being 'Urinals on sale now by
>Duchamp Inc.'...which would have flipped the signal to noise ratio of his
>message...
>

Duchamp was in fact one of the organizers.  He was on the board of the
society and in his capacity as such, he put much pressure on the other
board members to accept the urinal, of course never revealing that it was
he that had submitted it.  This whole game that Duchamp was playing carried
the message 'fuck the art establishment no matter how liberal they think
they are.'

The problem was that once the cat was out of the bag and art critics
realized that the urinal was a work by Duchamp, they began to admire it for
its aesthetic value.  This of course was the last thing that Duchamp wanted
so he started replicating the object to devalue it, to strip it of its art
credentials, and in a sense return it to its status as mass produced object
(a bit of irony). But of course this did not work it just became an edition.

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