Marcel Duchamp |
Marcel Duchamp THE CREATIVE ACT Session on the Creative Act, Convention of the American Federation of Arts, Houston, Texas, April 1957 Prof. William Seitz (1914-1974), Princeton University Prof. Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007), Sarah Lawrence College Gregory Bateson (1904-1980), anthropologist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), mere artist
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To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth
beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.
If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state
of consciousness on the esthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it.
All his decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition
and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out.
T.S. Eliot, in his essay on "Tradition and Individual Talent", writes: "The more
perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers
and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute
the passions which are its material."
Millions of artists create; only a few thousands are discussed or accepted by the
spectator and many less again are consecrated by posterity.
In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius:
he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his declarations
take a social value and that, finally, posterity includes him in the primers of
Artist History.
I know that this statement will not meet with the approval of many artists who refuse
this mediumistic role and insist on the validity of their awareness in the creative act—
yet, art history has consistently decided upon the virtues of a work of art thorough
considerations completely divorced from the rationalized explanations of the artist.
If the artist, as a human being, full of the best intentions toward himself and the
whole world, plays no role at all in the judgment of his own work, how can one describe
the phenomenon which prompts the spectator to react critically to the work of art?
In other words, how does this reaction come about?
This phenomenon is comparable to a transference from the artist to the spectator
in the form of an esthetic osmosis taking place through the inert matter, such as
pigment, piano or marble.
But before we go further, I want to clarify our understanding of the word 'art'—
to be sure, without any attempt at a definition.
What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever
adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way
that a bad emotion is still an emotion.
Therefore, when I refer to 'art coefficient', it will be understood that I refer not
only to great art, but I am trying to describe the subjective mechanism which produces
art in the raw state— à l'état brut— bad, good or indifferent.
In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain
of totally subjective reactions. His struggle toward the realization is a series of
efforts, pains, satisfaction, refusals, decisions, which also cannot and must not be
fully self-conscious, at least on the esthetic plane.
The result of this struggle is a difference between the intention and its realization,
a difference which the artist is not aware of.
Consequently, in the chain of reactions accompanying the creative act, a link is missing.
This gap, representing the inability of the artist to express fully his intention,
this difference between what he intended to realize and did realize, is the personal
'art coefficient' contained in the work.
In other works, the personal 'art coefficient' is like a arithmetical relation between
the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed.
To avoid a misunderstanding, we must remember that this 'art coefficient' is a personal
expression of art à l'état brut, that is, still in a raw state,
which must be 'refined' as pure sugar from molasses by the spectator; the digit of
this coefficient has no bearing whatsoever on his verdict. The creative act takes
another aspect when the spectator experiences the phenomenon of transmutation:
through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual transubtantiation
has taken place, and the role of the spectator is to determine the weight of the work
on the esthetic scale.
All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator
brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting
its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This
becomes even more obvious when posterity gives a final verdict and sometimes
rehabilitates forgotten artists.
— from Robert Lebel, Marcel Duchamp,
In Calvin Tomkins's The Bride & the Bachelors (Viking Press, 1965), the author
begins his chapter on Marcel Duchamp with this provocative paragraph: "One day in 1957,
speaking as a "mere artist" before a learned seminar on contemporary aesthetics in
Houston, Texas, Marcel Duchamp proposed a somewhat surprising definition of the
spectator's role in that mysterious process known as the creative act. The artist,
Duchamp said, is a "mediumistic being" who does not really know what he is doing or
why he is doing it. It is the spectator who, through a kind of "inner osmosis",
deciphers and interprets the work's inner qualifications, relates them to the external
world, and thus completes the creative cycle. The spectator's contribution is consequently
equal in importance to the artist's, and perhaps in the long run even greater, for as
Duchamp remarked in another context, "it is posterity that makes the masterpiece."
Like so many of the ideas put forward by Duchamp, who has for years been the most
enigmatic presence in contemporary art, this theory tends to make a great many artists
uncomfortable. Artists, as a rule, do not like to think of themselves as mediumistic
beings who blindly perform only one part of the creative act, and their attitude toward
the spectator is not always one of respectful collaboration. For Duchamp himself, though,
the theory has recently assumed a peculiar relevance. Having engaged in no formal artistic
activity since 1923, Duchamp has achieved, in his late seventies, the unique position of
being a member of the posterity that is passing judgment on his own work— a process
of deciphering and interpretation that has been proceeding at a pace little short of
phenomenal."
The idea that a work of art is not completed when artists finish painting their
canvases but continues with the spectator viewing them goes back to Tolstoy's essay
What Is Art? (1898):
"Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship
both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and with all those who,
simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression...
Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously by means of certain
external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are
infected by these feelings and also experience them."
[What Is Art?, translated by Aylmer Maude, Oxford University Press, London, 1930, pp. 120-122]
Ever since reading Tolstoy's view on art many years ago, every museum visit has become an adventure.
I'll stand in front of a painting or sculpture and let the spirit of the artwork imbue
me with the artist's creative energy. Often an insight will inspire my scientific
research or poetic process of discovery. Thus, I was excited reading about
Marcel Duchamp's idea on the creative act. After finding Duchamp's 1957 Houston talk
in Robert Lebel's book in the Stanford stacks, I transcribed the entire text above.
I've also added web links to the other noted speakers at the Houston conference.
Additional web links to Marcel Duchamp's artworks are provided below.
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Nude Descending
Bride or Mariée (1912)
Artcyclopedia: Marcel Duchamp Bicycle Wheel (1913)
The Large Glass or
Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art:
the artist on the one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity.
Grove Press, New York, 1959, pp. 77-78
(Stanford Library: ND553.D774.L43FOLIO)
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the Staircase (1912)
Web Links to Marcel Duchamp
(Museums exhibiting Duchamp's works)
Marcel Duchamp World Community
(Who is Marcel Duchamp?, Created Originals,
Duchamp Books, Posters, Videos)
Wikipedia: Marcel Duchamp
(Childhood, Early Work, Readymades,
Large Glass, Kinetic Works, Legacy)
Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp
(By Andrew Stafford, Chronology
of Duchamp's artworks explored)
"Duchamp's Hidden Noise:
A Lifelong Flirtation with Fame",
By Alice Goldfarb Marquis
(The Idler, Vol. II, No. 24, May 8, 2000)
Bride
Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even
(Visual Analysis, Interpretation, References)
The Large Glass, By Tony Smith
(Analysis of Duchamp's work via physics)
Duchamp's The Large Glass
(By Theodore Gracyk,
Marcel Duchamp's later works)
Duchamp: A Biography by Calvin Tomkins
(Washington Post, Chapter One:
The Bride Stripped Bare)
Through the Large Glass
(Computer work on Marcel Duchamp's art)
The Bride Stripped Bare
By Her Bachelors,
Even (1913-1925)
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(9-22-2007)
