Relationships Between The Compressed Art Cube and Duchamp's Readymades

Marcel Duchamp is widely credited as bringing to art the idea that ordinary objects can be made into art by the discerning artist. The use of found or appropriated objects has continued to be an essential part of works by Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Nevelson, Damian Hirst and countless others. Duchamp's "readymades" were objects like a comb, bicycle wheel or a typewriter cover, often slightly altered by placing them upside-down or some other minor alteration to the intended configuration. Infamously, in 1917 Duchamp submitted the Fountain, an upside-down urinal signed with the pseudonym R. Mutt, to an exhibition curated by the American Society of Independent Artists, as a way of testing its all inclusive entry standard. Fountain was rejected, but immediately caused a philosophical schism over the very nature of art that continues to our present day. Must art be beautiful? meaningful? must it be made by an artist? Fountain postulated that anything could be considered art, and brought into question the significance of art as a special and unique object. Duchamp saw the artist "not as craftsman, but as gifted perciever whose choice of an object is seen as a creative act.”

I asked myself some of the same questions that must have inspired Duchamp's readymades while concieving the Compressed Art Cube. I do want to question and perhaps expand the notion of what art can be, but my answer is not nearly so total or revolutionary. The Compressed Art Cube is firstly intended as a formalist inquiry; into the nature of the materials, the use of force to create the work (while simultaneously destroying another), and the simple repetition of a cube form. There are also conceptual components such as the desecration of artwork, the ethic of reuse, and method of appropriation and automation. The Cube is however still an object made by an artist and intended to be beautiful in a way. So far, I still consider the craft an important part of making the pieces, and the choice of objects used to make the cubes is not done so much as a gifted perciever, but as a collage artist working with the arrangement of forms and images.

In his book The Abuse of Beauty, Arthur Danto names three basic types of beauty: aesthetic, intellectual, and moral. The initial rejection of Fountain was based on the perception that it was not art and not beautiful. Danto argues against this initial reaction by describing a "metaphysical distinction between Fountain, and the urinal it consisted of." Fountain is the total artwork; Duchamp's intentions and philosophies as well as the accumulated response to the artwork, which gives the piece an internal beauty which is at least intellectual, if not aesthetic and moral as well. This has led me to the the understanding that: the Compressed Art Cube might act as a test for the hypothesis that the artistic intention which gives artwork an internal beauty is metaphysically distinct from the material object in such a way that the beauty might remain if the object is radically altered.

The Compressed Art Cube product is an aggregate of other artworks as well as a new art object created by another artist. If there is a metaphysical component to an artwork, distinct from the piece itself then perhaps that internal beauty could exist even if the object was obscured or obliterated. In process of making the cubes, I make decisions about which artworks to use, what types of media to combine, how I want them to be arranged on the exterior of the cube, producing a crumpled polyp of color or a glimpse of a larger image and so forth. When I handle the materials I've gathered; some from dumpsters, others were donations, or my own, from the thrift store and such, most of the components would be considered 'bad art' or perhaps not art at all, yet I do pause to appreciate the thing and see it as art. Upon inspection, most anyone could see the cubes are made of other artwork and they will know something of the original work, yet it will also be obvious that the peculiar arrangement is art in itself. How will viewers consider the remaining details of the appropriated artworks in combination with the new artwork I have created?

If I crushed the urinal signed R.Mutt into a cube, Fountain would stil exist but it would be forever changed. An new artistic intention would be superimposed upon it's history, and thus it's artistic importance. Probably for a time people would say it had been destroyed by a fool, but the images and writings and thoughts that are the truly beautiful part of Fountain would remain. Perhaps a museum would simply find a similar urinal and say it was the new physical component of Fountain. Perhaps the crushed urinal would have to be accepted as it was, and it's history and interest and internal beauty would only grow deeper, the publicity and controversy of a great work of art smashed in an act of artistic irreverence would resonate such that an even greater work of art came of it. I hope that Duchamp would appreciate the destruction, considering that he wants to get rid of art, and feels there is an "unnecessary adoration of art in the world today" At the very least, Compressed Art Cubes create fewer, more dense works of art than had existed before.

Danto, Arthur Coleman, The abuse of beauty : aesthetics and the concept of art, Chicago, Ill. [u.a.] Open Court 2003

MacLeod, Glen G., Wallace Stevens and company : the Harmonium years, 1913-1923, Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press, ©1983