A Paper presented in the third European Avant-garde and Modernism Studies (EAM) Conference in the University of Kent 8.9. 2012
By
Irmeli Hautamäki
Marcel
Duchamp’s art has often been addressed from the point of view of the art object.
It has been proposed that, in the readymades, the material art object withers while
the concept of art comes to the foreground. (Kosuth, Danto.) These
interpretations, however neglect Duchamp’s interest in language that played an
important role both in Duchamp’s readymades and in his other works. Consequently, I propose that Duchamp’s new art
investigated the interplay or interference of linguistic and material elements,
and that he intended to create a new idea of art on this basis.
Duchamp and the Poetic Language
Minimal
regard has been given to Duchamp’s notion of language with the exception of his
interviews with Georges Carbonnier on French radio in 1961. Charbonnier, who was
interested in Surrealism has focused to the special character of titles in
Duchamp’s paintings, such as “The King
and Queen surrounded by Swift Nudes” and “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her
Bachelors, Even” that anticipated the surrealistic practices.
“GC:
- You have named one of your works as “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her
Bachelors, Even”. When I was very young I asked from myself, who is this “her”
to whom the Bachelors belong: I must confess that I am still asking the meaning
of this possessive.
MD: - It is precisely the indefinable character
of the possessive ‘her’ that has allowed me to use it. The word ‘her’ is
still quite simple, it is a possessive, a derivate of the idea of
possessing. But what bride do the bachelors possess? No one knows. It is so to
speak an idea – let us call it poetic – an idea that I would not consider as
nonsense but as amusing to think about: it directs one’s thought to something
unexpected. But what is even more interesting is the word “even” that comes in
the end. It does not have a referent, it does not mean ‘the bachelors
themselves: it is an adverb that has no significance in this context, and it
comes like a hair in the soup in the end of the sentence. This interested
Breton and other surrealists as they used afterwards similar indefinable,
obscure character of language. And really, it is not nonsense, but it gives quite
a confusing direction to one’s mind. … So, as you understand, I liked to
use this vein of language or at least I tried to use it. I practiced it both in
the titles and paintings themselves.”[1]
Duchamp
explained that certain kind of spirit that lies beneath the surface of the “coarse
language” interested him in Surrealism. In poetic language things are not
merely communicated from a person to another but there exists a sublevel that
directs one’s mind to something unexpected. Duchamp said that though it sounds humoristic, it should not be labeled as nonsense. All (French) art except
Jarry and Rabelais is accomplishment of serious spirits, while he tried to create
laughter in the good sense.
Why
the linguistic side of Duchamp’s art has not been studied more and why it has
been bypassed with a mere laughter, may due to a scholarly (scientific)
attitude that regards this kind of language as meaningless. We tend to omit
such surprising meanings as funny, as nothing interesting. However, the poetic
use of language can be scrutinized from a linguistic point of view (or
philosophy of language).
Let
us address a typical surrealist utterance or Duchamp’s titles. Even though they
deviate from normal communication, they are grammatically correct. Surrealistic
poetry differs structurally from everyday language. The deviations do not break
the grammatical rules rather than the so-called rules of choosing that
determine the linguistic paradigms: words that can appear in certain linguistic
contexts. Look for instance of Breton’s line
Leurs seins dans lesquelles pleure à jamais
l’invisible lait bleu.
(Their breasts in which cries the forever
invisible blue milk.)
Or
Duchamp’s titles, such as
La Mariée mise a nu par ses celibataires, même
or
Le Roi et la reine entourées avec les nus vites.
(The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes.)
These
utterances are grammatically correct but they are without sense in normal
communication. According to standard linguistics such expressions are
meaningless because they don’t refer to any existing state of affairs. They do
not represent anything. It is noteworthy that representation is herein regarded
as the criteria of meaningfulness. According to a narrow positivistic idea, utterances,
which lack truth-value, are meaningless.[2]
Poetic
language is different. Poetry, and especially surrealistic poetry, cannot be interpreted
by translating it into the language of prose. In general, surrealistic poetry aims
to prevent this kind of translation. There is no representative everyday
language sentence into which Breton’s line could be translated. Surrealistic language works
metaphorically by transferring the meaning; it thus gives a new referent to an utterance.
Poetic use of language creates new referents that can be called ‘poetic objects’.
Duchamp
used such a technique in his titles. The titles “Jeune homme triste dans une
train” (Sad young man on a train.) and ‘The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift
Nudes’ create new meanings and new referents instead of pointing to some
existing referent.[3]
Equally
surprising as the titles themselves is the fact that they do not match with the
pictorial content of the paintings. The appearance of the painting has no obvious
connection to the title. The linguistic and pictorial elements work separately,
independently of each other. The
painting does not represent what the title says. The cubists found this
disturbing in Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’ –painting and demanded
that the embarrassing title should be removed.
Duchamp
developed the same practice further in his readymade works. The readymades are
compounded of two kinds of ingredients: linguistic elements and material
objects. Duchamp explained that the
linguistic element was prior in the specification of a readymade. He presented ‘a rule’, which said that a
“readymade should be inscribed at such and such moment”. By this he meant that at first one
should search for an utterance and only after this the material readymade object
should be looked for ‘with all kinds of delays’. Thus even the utterance was taken
as a readymade, it was treated like a material object. Many avant-garde
poets used language in this way in their poetic practice: they adopted
material from newspaper titles, or mixed pieces of advertising into their
poems, this kind of linguistic material was available all over in the urban
surroundings. Obviously Duchamp had something like this on his mind when
specifying a readymade? After all, language is a readymade.
Take
for instance the utterance: “In advance
of a broken arm”, it sounds like an advertisement. It is syntactically correct but semantically
without meaning. Before a broken arm there was – what? The utterance directs
the viewer’s mind to something unexpected, it allures to create a poetic
object.
As
for choosing the material object in a readymade it was important to strip it
from aesthetic qualities. One should not pay attention to the appearance of the
object in choosing it. To the utterance ‘In advance of a broken arm’ he
attached an ordinary snow-shovel.
Thus,
in a readymade Duchamp explores the effects that the compounding of linguistic
and material elements brings about in a viewer.
Nominalism and the Poetic Language
In
addition to surrealistic techniques Duchamp made (thought) experiments
with other linguistic techniques that liberated words from the conventions of
normal communication. He could take words as mere physical objects, graphic
appearances without a general meaning. In this sense words as palindromes and
anagrams interested him. With this technique he intended to "strip" words from their general meaning. Herein he took
advantage of the nominalist theory of meaning. According
to Nominalism the universals like ‘beauty’ or ‘truth’ are nothing but names, they
do not refer to any general class of objects. Duchamp made referred
explicitly to nominalism in his Notes stating that the words or the writing
yields nothing but plastic entities that have perceivable appearance; the words
are comparable to mere lines and groups of lines. Words are unique and can be
read and written in any order so that a group of words no more expresses a work
of art (a poem, a painting, music.)
The
relevance of nominalism lies in the fact that it supports the poetic use of
language and also helps to reach for new unexpected meanings. The homonymic
character of French was crucial herein and Duchamp used it in his word games. Several
different words are pronounced in same way depending on the context. Or: they sound
similar but are written differently, so actually they are different words. (Litterature -> Lits et ratures beds
and mistakes.) In Duchamp nominalism was a technique that opposed standard
linguistic practice. The idea, that language should be liberated from its
standard conventions seems to be a typical French idea indeed, but it is
present in many other avant-garde artists of the moment, as well.
Duchamp and the New Aesthetics of
In
Duchamp’s art there are two different sorts of elements: linguistic and
material that are compounded. The linguistic elements, (L), are materialized by
stripping them from general meanings – as a result new unexpected meanings
emerge. Similarly the material
elements (O), the readymade objects were stripped from the aesthetic qualities.
These two kinds of elements work in a special way. This is not signifying, as
one would expect. The linguistic element is not connected to the object like a
name, which would signify a special meaning (M). A readymade does not signify, but
rather the different elements, interact with each other and influence one
another. They may even interfere each other.
In
a readymade Duchamp explores the effects that the compounding of linguistic and
material elements brings about in a viewer. This gives as a result a new aesthetics. The linguistic
element has an effect on the object and vice versa. The utterance in “In advance of a broken arm, disturbs the
viewer’s standard idea of the object the snow-shovel. But the process also
works in the opposite direction. The material characteristics of the object – for
instance that a shovel is used in throwing snow – are relevant to the
linguistic element, the utterance. If the snow-shovel would be replaced with
another object, its compounding to the utterance would yield another effect.
This results that the material aspects of readymade objects are not indifferent
as has been stated, but the material and functioning of the objects do matter. Examples:
The Bottle dryer, A Trap.
Duchamp
explained the principles of his new aesthetics in his article “The Creative
Process”. He ended up with the surprising conviction that it is the spectator who
is responsible in the creative act. The artists is a mere medium: he sure how
his intentions are fulfilled since he is not self-conscious on the aesthetic
plane. The viewer/spectator who is
under the influence of ‘inert matter – such as pigment, piano or marble’ among
which we should add the linguistic elements – is supposed to add his or her
contribution to the creative act.
Naturally
the evaluation of Duchamp’s art raises problems in traditional aesthetics. Some
art theoreticians who are adherents of the traditional aesthetics (Donald
Kuspit) have strongly criticized Duchamp’s aesthetics. To understand why the
evaluation of Duchamp’s art is problematical we should consider the idea of
representation that is crucial in traditional/standard aesthetics. Traditional
aesthetics supposes that a work of art represents, imitates or refers
something, an object or content (existing or not) and that there is a referent
as a source of the meaning. Exactly in the same way as in classical theory of meaning wherein the meaning of
an utterance must be explicated with the help of language, the classical theory
of art takes for granted that an artwork has a meaning that lies in a representative content.
The content in turn must be expressed as a group of literary utterances. Though a work of art is not evaluated in terms of its content but form, the Kantian aesthetics nevertheless requires the work to have a representative relationship to reality. Standard aesthetic supposes that due to representation the form of the artwork is important in respect of its content – and one should focus on the form of the artwork. Duchamp’s art – like most part of the avant-garde art – does not represent, there are just two kinds of elements, linguistic and material (or pictorial), and their interaction or interplay is at stake.[4] In Duchamp’s case the classical art theory, which supposes that an artist or artwork gives a form to certain content loses its relevance.
The content in turn must be expressed as a group of literary utterances. Though a work of art is not evaluated in terms of its content but form, the Kantian aesthetics nevertheless requires the work to have a representative relationship to reality. Standard aesthetic supposes that due to representation the form of the artwork is important in respect of its content – and one should focus on the form of the artwork. Duchamp’s art – like most part of the avant-garde art – does not represent, there are just two kinds of elements, linguistic and material (or pictorial), and their interaction or interplay is at stake.[4] In Duchamp’s case the classical art theory, which supposes that an artist or artwork gives a form to certain content loses its relevance.
[2] See Kaitaro, 162.
[3] The sounds ‘Triste train’ are supposed
to be amusing, certainly they don’t refer to anything.
[4] There is no point to think that the
linguistic element would refer to the material element or to be content of the material element. Neither
there is the reason to think that the material element would be the form of certain meaning content that is
expressed in the linguistic part.
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