This is about the artist, “artist”, Marcel Duchamp. I’m not going to explain jack shit about him here so if you don’t know him… well I guess do still read but my point is I’m not doing a bio.
I got really into Marcel when I read this paragraph, emphasis mine:
Simon Morley, Seven Keys to Modern Art
“Duchamp was looking for ways to reject the most the most fundamental assumptions about art. A key notion explored during these years, one that would become central to his concept of art and the artist, was what he termed the ‘beauty of indifference’. Rather than seeing art as a means of self-expression or as a way of creating a beautiful artifact, Duchamp promoted the idea that a work of art must have an existence that is completely separate not only from the life of the maker, who henceforth approaches his or her practice with the air of the detached and ironic observer, but also from the production of anything resembling an aesthetically pleasing and handmade object.”
I flipped out for this idea, ranting for days just quoting it. Free from self-expression and from beauty? How could something be so pure? So austere and still be, you know, made by someone? Free from having to appeal to artist or audience? Amazing. In music I like the idea that you make the record you want to make and then release it, if it finds an audience in a way it becomes theirs and has stopped being totally yours. But that is pure self-expression. And even anonymous art is self-expression, it’s just self expression where the audience can project of what they want onto the artist.
I’m really into Brutalist architecture so that’s where my mind went too, ugly, anonymous, practical things that we find wonderful. but big things being awe-inspiring isn’t art, it’s just big things are big.
Then when I got the book and read more into Duchamp himself I found this:
“Duchamp knew his limitations as a draughtsman – he couldn’t draw and had no colour sense – and wisely realized he would always fail in the competition with his older brothers, more technically artists.”
And I’ve known so many guys like that, particularly in music – people trying to turn an anti-awareness of theory into cheap access to genius. If they succeed it’s by forcing themselves onto the art. Exactly as Duchamp did. He didn’t divorce art from artist by using a urinal turned on it’s side, he declared I am a greater artist, I have greater insight, I, I, I, look at me, and he was only able to do so because of his connections in the art world – he submitted pieces anonymously and then pushed through their acceptance himself.
What he was doing was anti-wonder and terribly cynical and it came from a wounded place. I hate that because I’ve been that.
And furthermore, when I say he ruined art it’s because that ‘shock of the new’ only lasts while things are new, turning a urinal on it’s side and declaring it art has to be outdone constantly because it has no actual artistic value. His, and his subsequent imitators, dilettantish questions about what is art are insincere and meant to provocative but not to be answered. Plus, if anything is art then everything is art, and as all know if everything is special then nothing is special. and that’s what got the world to tune out, to mock, and dismiss art.
That’s my thing on Duchamp.
Author/Athlete, Thinker/Doer
Alastair's Ego 
[…] I wrote about this book a bit before so I’ll link to that and not re-write that whole […]