On my visit to the Museum of Modern Art, it was my goal to look and analyze Dada, a style of art created in 1916, apparently as a reaction to World War 1. I remember learning about Dadaism in art appreciation class but I had a hard time remembering what it was. I chose to go to the museum without looking into what specifically my topic was “supposed to” look like or what details where “characteristic” of it because I wanted to form my own opinions.
As a slight aside – Upon entering the museum I asked the front desk where to go for Dadaism, and they said fourth or fifth floor. I went to the fourth floor, and then the fifth floor, and then back down to the fourth, and then back up to the fifth. I asked 4 security guards and they said they hadn’t heard of It (Dadaism) and that I should go to the information desk. The information desk on the fourth floor said to go to five and ask the security guards, “They will direct you,” she said. The lady on the fifth floor told me to go to the fourth floor, “They can help you find it,” she said. After stumbling around I finally found a placard that said “Dada” and there was a small corner devoted to the works of Marcel Duchamp.
I only mention this long story because the entire time I was going from one floor to another I kept noticing certain pieces of art, and one that stood out to me was Duchamp’s “Bicycle Wheel”, so it seemed natural for me to pick that as my first piece to inspect.
I first let my initial reaction guide me. And my initial reaction was “Okay so what the hell is this, what is this supposed to mean?” and that’s when I remembered the reading I did and how in my first blog post I mention finally understanding the full profundity of Duchamps work – that art is not necessarily a painting or a pretty picture but something that makes you think, and in that sense anything is art. So I felt like I cheated, I felt like I already knew the answer. But it was naïve of me to say I understood the full profundity of Duchamp’s work, and of this Bicycle wheel. So I tried to understand where this idea that “art is anything that makes you think” came from.
Looking at the bicycle wheel I continued my thought, “so what the hell is this?” well it was a bicycle wheel that was attached to a chair in a crude, yet surprisingly sleek, manner. It was a strong sturdy chair, with a strong symmetrical presence, appearing very grounded and earthbound. It seemed that the strength and balance of the chair was artistic in and of itself, but it also appeared that the slender grace of the bicycle wheel fit with the strength of the chair. It seemed to me that these two pieces belonged together, that they helped to highlight the features of the other – the wheel highlighting the base’s strength, and the base highlighting the streamlined, infinite beauty of the wheel. And yet, these pieces individually would almost never have found their way together without the hand of Duchamp.
In viewing them, I did not find any immediate pleasure and was not immediately impressed by the art but through thinking why this piece of junk was at an art museum I learned what makes art. Rather, I learned to think about what makes art, not necessarily coming up an answer. The point however, was that I was thinking. I was thinking about the art; why it was put together in this way, what was the point, what art even is, what makes this piece of art special, why is this combination of two random objects somehow important. I feel that just by asking these questions, i was experiencing the art. These questions were part of the art piece, they were natural, they were instinctive. They are what make the art piece, a piece of art; and what makes that particular art piece worthy of being in MOMA.
I read on the placard that Dadaism was a way of rejecting the world and the First World War and I couldn’t understand what it meant. In retrospect I have come up with some semblance of an answer. Dadaism was not fighting war by putting a bunch of randomness together and saying “here, randomness and differentness and avant-gardeness, suck on that you war mongering bastards, we aren’t gonna be a part of your system.” No, it was something much more eloquent than that.
They were fighting the idea of taking things at face value, without questioning. The war started because it was without question that countries had to defend each other, and it was without question that more land was good. It was without question that we will fight this war because we are at war. This is just as Dadaism relates to war, because that is what the placard said, that Dadaism was a response to the war.
Duchamp however, and this is just speculation, had much more in mind than just war with his ready-mades. He was not saying to question just war, but to question everything, question everything that we take as obvious, things like what is art. Art is when a guy with strange hair and a frock has a palate in one hand and is drawing on an easel in the other, right? (Maybe I just think that because of watching Bob Ross as a child.) Just like we had to question our assumptions about art, Duchamp was making a statement about all of our assumptions – question them. Maybe art isn’t a guy with crazy hair and a painter’s palate in one hand, but a guy who dresses in drag and puts chairs together with bicycle wheels.
Though I think that doesn’t do justice to Duchamp because the point isn’t which one is art but rather what makes it art. And what makes it art, I think, is that you are allowed to see the world as the artist wants you to see it; that your way of seeing is temporarily distorted and altered. In the case of bicycle wheel, in order to see the art how Duchamp wanted you to see it, you have to question.
The other exhibit I chose to look at was “Rotary Demisphere” which featured an interesting apparatus, a circular, should-be rotating, half-sphere – aka a rotary demisphere. This was mounted on dark purple velvet and attached to a wooden dowel, which was inserted into a triangular, apparently wooden, base, which was circumscribed by metal. The intersection of the Dowel and the triangle was covered by an upside-down funnel shape to brace the dowel to the base. On the funnel brace there was an oblate silver light. The top of the machine was connected by two black wires to a white gear mechanism which I believe was supposed to turn the demisphere atop.
The demisphere, which was white, was marked by a black spiral, several actually, that met at the pole of the demisphere. Next to the demisphere on the ground was a cover for the top portion of the apparatus, it was a bronze disk, with a bulbous glass cover, that looked ethereal, as if the gravity inside the glass was both infinitely strong and yet non-existent. The brass was inscribed with a saying in French that sounded very hypnotic when I tried to recite it.
I could vividly imagine being transfixed by this rotating sphere, with the oblong light at the bottom flickering on and off, illuminating the entire apparatus one moment and then being in complete darkness the next. All the while the sphere is spinning and I am concentrating on the one focal point, and the hypnotic French words are being repeated over a microphone by the sound of a French woman with a cigarette in her mouth. I felt myself lost in this feeling for a few seconds, though those few seconds had the feeling of much more than a few seconds.
I don’t know exactly what Duchamp’s goal was but it seemed to be a message that art can transfix us, it can literally enthrall us, and yet it is nothing more than an illusion. The spiral on the dome gives the illusion of timelessness, of falling into and out of this frame, the glass gives the illusion of weightlessness, the earth tones highlight the whiteness of the dome, giving you a focal point, giving you that feel of intimacy with the piece – that around the piece is everything else, all the normal boring stuff of the rest of the world but you are not concerned with all that stuff, you are paying attention to the black and white spiral in the middle, and that is your world.
Art, according to Duchamp, is an illusion. Art will “trick” your mind and eye into seeing something in a certain way, that a certain combination of elements, in this case a chair and a wheel, could be art, and that art can literally draw us in and make us see. That art can trick and distort our view of reality, in the case of the Rotary Demisphere – quite literally. Duchamp’s art was not great because it was aesthetically beautiful, not completely, but because it made us look at the world in a very different way, it altered my way of seeing. And in that sense, it accomplished what a great piece of art should do.
Blog A
Ilizar Yusupov
