Seizing experimental strategies from Marcel Duchamp
In the room “producers and consumers” you can read that a new aesthetic mentality is emerging within HIP practices as I could observe in the Orgelpark’s project of building a new Baroque organ. Experimentalism also characterizes the very nature of this museum (you can read more about experimentalism here and in the conclusion). In the following section I will try to show how some philosophical standpoints of Marcel Duchamp[1], one of the first avantguardists, can help developing valid justifications as to why an experimental approach is needed, what are its potential benefits and how it can contribute for the Orgelpark’s dual goal – and that of similar institutions - of innovating through the recreation of past musical culture for new practices of musicking.
You may wonder how Marcel Duchamp, mostly famous for the artistic revolutions that he provoked in visual arts since the early-1910s[2], could help institutions that seek to recreate past musical cultures like the Orgelpark or why is he be part of an interactive museum of historically informed musicking. However as we have tried to show, by adopting Christopher Small’s conception of musicking it becomes possible to deal with questions regarding music from disciplines that are not commonly included in musicological analyses such as philosophy or art history. Not only it is possible but, following Danto (1964) this has become of fundamental importance after the revolutions of the avant-garde that shocked the traditional idea of art based on direct aesthetic experience. Avant-garde artists like Duchamp – and later, as I have shown, Warhol – promoted a new, conceptual art based on the fundamental critique of those artist that produced ‘retinal’ paintings, only aimed at the satisfaction of the eye. In Duchamp’s opinion, art had to be relocated “at the service of the mind” (Duchamp, 1957, p.2). Art should be in this view an intellectual expression rather than about the production of something intended only for aesthetic contemplation[3].
In 1912 Duchamp abandoned painting and dedicated the rest of his artistic career almost entirely to the creation of readymades. Readymades can be conceptualized as a manufactured objects transformed into art simply by their selection and placement in an art institution. As the name already indicates, Duchamp shows that it is possible to make art and innovate through art with something that already exists in reality[4]. For Duchamp, it is the deliberate choice of the artist that counts much more than the actual fabrication of any work of art (Duchamp, 1957). In his view, artists through the power of their imagination can rehabilitate and regenerate something that was originated in the past and keep it alive by assigning it new meanings and by transposing them in new contexts of use. Moreover, this process of regeneration can also occur through intentional distortions as the case of his infamous readymade L.H.O.O.Q. (1919) shows.
L.H.O.O.Q. is a photographical reproduction of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa to which Duchamp provocatively added a mustache and beard. This is an example of a “readymade aided” meaning that Duchamp in this circumstance did not expose an object as he had found it but added graphic details and a title to it. It is precisely through these distortions of the original artwork that Duchamp could accomplish a number of innovations. Firstly, he was able to assign radically new meanings to Leonardo’s Mona Lisa : he used tradition – in this case an extraordinarily traditional painting such as the Mona Lisa – to promote ideas that could have a present significance such as the endorsement of a new role for femininity, the exaltation of androgyny and other issues of gender, sexuality and identity[5]. Secondly, Duchamp managed not only to promote new ideas but to reintroduce the Mona Lisa itself in the present. As Lafarge (1996) points out, Duchamp’s achievement with L.H.O.O.Q was “to bring the Mona Lisa back from the dead. By attacking its iconic status, he removed it from historical time and brought it into the present, the only place where art can be experienced. L.H.O.O.Q was actually an act of rescue […] rather than an act of desecration” (p. 2). Thirdly and perhaps mostly importantly, given his “extreme respect and love” for his audience, Duchamp allowed other people to rethink and reinterpret both the Mona Lisa and Leonardo (Duchamp, 1957, p.1; Sgarbi, 2013). LaFarge (1996) shows indeed how important L.H.O.O.Q was in this regard: “What L.H.O.O.Q. did […] was to nominate the petrified painting as a center of activity: a subject of debate, parody, paradox, criticism, thought, and reinvention. L.H.O.O.Q. simultaneously documents Duchamp’s thought processes and implicitly invites further interventions” (p. 2). T. S. Eliot (1919) and Arthur Danto (1964) can help to give value to this point. In 1919, Eliot wrote in his Tradition and the Individual Talent:
“What happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly altered [emphasis added] and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new” (Elliot, 1919, p.1)
Elliot here in short argues that once a new artwork is created, the whole history of art changes. Just like through Picasso we now look at the paintings of Cezanne with a new eye, so Duchamp did with Leonardo. The distortions operated by Duchamp to Leonardo’s Mona Lisa spurred interest in both the artist and its artwork thus leading more people to look at his art with new eyes. LaFarge (1996) points out that in this new climate, several new considerations and reflections were made about the Mona Lisa. Certainly one of the most remarkable of these was Lillian Schwartz’s discovery that the chief model for the Mona Lisa could have been Leonardo himself (LaFarge, 1996). Duchamp thus, through intentional distortions of an ‘original’ artwork, allowed other artists to reinvent, rediscover Leonardo and to create new art through new art theories. This exactly goes in accordance to Danto’s (1964) conception of artistic matrix, produced by the number of artistic predicates[6] available. A predicate for Danto is what makes possible to distinguish art from non-art: by arguing that art “is impressionist” we create an ‘artworld’ – a term coined by Danto to indicate the cultural context to which art is dependent – in which impressionism would be a qualitative criterion that distinguishes artworks from non-artworks. In his article Danto shows that an artistic matrix will always allow 2ⁿ possible art forms (ⁿ being the number of predicates). This means that we can create more art by adding predicates to the matrix of predicates that we already have in place to understand art. By creating a distorted ‘replica’ Duchamp has enlarged our understanding of art through art theory. However, this whole process of addition of art theory was not performed by Duchamp alone. This brings me to the second experimental strategy that I take from Duchamp – the first was intentional distortion – namely, embrace of otherness.
In 1957, the elderly Duchamp argues that in the creative act there is always a gap between intention and realization. This means that artists are never able to express themselves fully. For this reason, as Duchamp argues, their art “must be refined as pure sugar from molasses, by the spectator or the audience” (Duchamp, 1957, p. 139-140). In the end of his article he specifies that “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” (Duchamp, 1957, p. 140). In sum in order to act creatively, to innovate, artists always inevitably contribution by other people, an embrace of otherness. Moreover, in The Great Trouble with Art in This Country (1946) Duchamp offered a more detailed view of the sort of otherness that he preferred:
“It was fundamentally Roussel who was responsible for my glass, the Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. From his Impression d’Afrique I got the general approach. This play of his which I saw with Apollinaire helped me greatly on one side of my expression. I saw at once I could use Roussel as an influence. I felt that as a painter it was much better to be influenced by a writer than by another painter” (Duchamp, 1946, p. 21).
Duchamp preferred being influenced by a writer instead than from a painter because he, similarly to what Small does with music, considered painting as a human activity, as “one means of expression among others, and not a complete end for life at all” (Duchamp & Peterson, 1975, p. 136). He also adds: “In other words, painting should not be exclusively retinal or visual; it should have to do with the gray matter, with our urge for understanding. This is generally what I love. I didn’t want to pin myself down to one little circle, and I tried at least to be as universal as I could” (ibid.). By considering painting as a human activity, as one means of expression among many other, Duchamp is essentially suggesting that an encounter with other perspectives is necessary for his “urge for understanding” (ibid.). Seeking to understand ourselves and reality that surrounds us through an experimental approach requires thus an encounter with others – an embrace of otherness – so that different versions of reality become co-present in order for the intrinsic polymorphism of our world to be revealed.
But how does this help an organization that seeks to recreate past musical culture in innovative ways for contemporary audiences? Under the experimental approach of the Orgelpark I argue that attempting to reproduce certain sound qualities through the new Baroque organ is only one step if the goal is to understand, and not merely imitate historical musical cultures. The next step to undertake would be to experiment with the sounds of new Baroque organ to understand Bach and, as Duchamp would concur, to keep him alive in the contemporary musical scene. I have proposed two experimental strategies from the works of Duchamp that can be used to enhance the learning process of the Orgelpark and innovate through the recreation of historical cultures. The first shows that traditions can be rediscovered and past artists can be interpreted with new eyes through an intentional distortion of artworks as Duchamp did with his L.H.O.O.Q. The Orgelpark and other institution with similar intentions could act similarly and through the affordances of technological devices – MIDI console and loudspeakers – connected to the organ or other instruments (such as alteration or manipulation of sound qualities) rediscover the sound of past composers with new ears, stimulate discussions and interest in them and create new art through new artistic reflections and theories, as Danto’s conception of the artistic matrix demonstrates. Nevertheless, to add new and more predicates to the artistic matrix an embrace of otherness is inevitably needed and, as Duchamp suggests, one could be inspired by views coming from foreign disciplines. Peters (2014) argued that the Orgelpark tries to attract many interested publics such as “organ players, composers, and organ music audiences […] but also scholars working on sound, innovation, artistic research, and listening practices” (p. 2). I suggest that the Orgelpark as well as similar institutions should extend this list also to people that are foreigners to processes of instrument building or performances on period instruments. The Orgelpark for example should attract musicians that typically do not play Baroque music but rather jazz, blues or any other contemporary genre who, through technological devices connected to period instruments, could alter, modify and distort the ‘original’ sound. The Orgelpark could thus keep Bach alive by allowing audiences to look at Bach with new eyes and experiment with the new Baroque organ in new ways and innovative ways.
[1] To be clear, what was the actual philosophical position of Duchamp is very debated and I do not claim to have found the correct way of interpreting his thoughts. As Weiss (1994) argues, in his writings multiple – oftentimes contradictory - perspectives appear and moreover, art critiques and philosophers have interpreted his writings and readymades in diverse manners. In this paper I will present the main ideas inherent in his artworks and writings – those shared by the vast majority of researchers of Duchamp studies – about his conceptual art and the revolutions it brought to traditional conceptions of art.
[2] To be precise, Duchamp did compose some music but this is beside the point of this paper since I here am only focusing on his visual art.
[3]Duchamp makes this point explicit in The Great Trouble with Art in this Country. Reflecting on his past career he wrote in 1946: “I wanted to get away from the physical aspect of painting. I was much more interested in recreating ideas in paintings. […] I was interested in ideas – not merely visual products. I wanted to put paintings once again at the service of the mind” (Duchamp, 1946, p. 20)
[4] This is also what the Orgelpark intends to achieve, namely to innovate through the rediscovery of Bach.
[5] Here I am limiting my list to only some meanings of L.H.O.O.Q. I am aware that a plethora of meanings have been assigned to L.H.O.O.Q. not only by Duchamp himself but also by diverse art critiques a posteriori. I believe instead that for the purpose of this paper the most important aspect of this readymade is the fact that through distortion one can rehabilitate and rediscover tradition in new ways and assign new meanings to artworks in order keep them (and their creator) alive in the present and for future audiences.
