Readymade Artworld
Readymade Artworld
Shelley Lake
Artists Writing (APG-5330-OL): Critical Theory
October 6, 2019
Nothing is more incestuous than the artworld. Beneath its semi-permeable membrane, the artworld thrives as a vibrant autonomic system, occasionally welcoming outsiders. It speaks to the world in a language that only it can understand. And if you dare to speak that language, be prepared for the consequences of your thoughts.
What is the artworld? What events led to its inception? Was Marcel Duchamp a driving force behind the creation of an artworld?
Arthur Danto coined the term artworld in an essay written more than fifty years after Duchamp’s first readymade. Danto suggested that an artist could make something ordinary into a work of art by virtue of an artworld:
“To see something as art requires something the eye cannot decry–an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld.”[1]
Before Duchamp, prior to the invention of photography–artists were focused primarily on the representation of reality. The artist as craftsman prevailed. Art was the mirror of reality.
Shelley Lake, Conceptualism, 1988, 36x48 inches, enamel ink on aluminum (Duardo)
Although young Marcel was a classically trained painter, a cultural and technological revolution was taking place. Photography had established a ubiquitous presence in Duchamp’s Paris. The camera threatened an end to the painter’s hand. The popularity of photography not only changed the way people looked at art, it changed the way people made art–and ultimately changed the way people thought about art.
Duchamp understood the rules of a prosperous consumer culture. Instead of making something, he found something and hence, the artworld consecrated something. In addition to finding his readymade, Duchamp himself was a readymade. A brilliant, charismatic, charming personality who would be sanctified by art connoisseurs.
When answering the question, “What is the artworld?”, Danto explains how difficult it is to identify and understand the cultural landscape:
“Telling artworks from other things is not so simple a matter, even for native speakers, and these days one might not be aware he was on artistic terrain without an artistic theory to tell him so.”[2]
Duchamp clearly understood the significance of the world around him and his place in the artworld. He was careful not to make a hierarchical distinction when acknowledging the public:
“The artist makes something, then one day, he is recognized by the intervention of the public, of the spectator; so later he goes on to posterity. You can’t stop that, because, in brief, it’s a product of two poles–there’s the pole of the one who makes the work, and the pole of the one who looks at it. I give the latter as much importance as the one who makes it.”[3]
The world was ready to accept something new, but not the world in its entirety. There would be one stipulation, an artworld. As the great anthropologist Margaret Mead famously said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” It would be a small group–from Medici to Disney–it’s a small, small world.
[1] Arthur Danto, “The Artworld,” The Journal of Philosophy 61, no. 19 (October 15, 1964): 576, https://www.academia.edu/34471720/The_Artworld_DANTO.
[3] Pierre Cabanne, “Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp,” in Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, Translated from the French by Ron Padgett (London: Da Capo Press, 1971), 70.