The Readymades of Marcel Duchamp: The Ambiguities of an Aesthetic Revolution Author(s): Steven Goldsmith Reviewed work(s): Source: The

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Winter, 1983), pp. 197208 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/430663 . Accessed: 22/04/2012 18:07
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STEVEN GOLDSMITH

Readymades of Marcel Duchamp: The Ambiguities of

Aesthetic
to demonstrate, following Wittgenstein's theory of open concepts, that art could not be defined has not hindered some contemporary aestheticians from making the attempt. At the heart of such discussions, at least in the visual arts, lie Marcel Duchamp's readymades, which more than any other experiment has challenged the boundaries and even the foundations of art as a concept. In the second decade of this century, Duchamp selected commonplace objects, including a urinal provocatively entitled Fountain, and shook the art world by exhibiting them, often physically unaltered except for the appearance of the artist's signature, on pedestals in museums. After the initial reactions of laughter or disgust, the readymades held their status as artworks, usually categorized as sculpture, and since have become the central hurdle over which any attempt to define art must leap. Not only did the readymades find their way into permanent museum collections, but they solidified their position in the academic history of art by crucially influencing later developments. Without Duchamp's experiments it is likely that the Pop Art celebration of everyday objects or the current profusion of "junk" sculpture might never have occurred. In any case, such vigorous movements have helped theorists perceive the inadequacies of traditionalcriteria for art, such as imitation or expression, and have encourSTEVEN GOLDSMITH teaches English at the University of Pennsylvania.

The

an

Revolution
aged them either to abandon definition altogether or pursue it in some other direction. The attemptto define anythingis by nature a conservative activity. Conceptual definitions are necessarily exclusive; they focus on particular, selected characteristics at the expense of actual uniqueness or diversity. They allow us to order our experience by grouping certain things together and leaving others out. If Marcel Duchamppresents an object that radically questions the borders of any definition of art, an object that cannot be ignored because it has been accepted in practice as as art, the conservative critic seeks to enlarge the borders of theory and thus absorb the rebellion. While the peculiar, irresolvable natureof the readymadethreatens to undermine this endeavor with the assertion that everything (or, of course, nothing)is art, it also surprisinglyhelps to further the conventional cause. The strange paradox embodied in the readymade is that, dependingon the interpretation one accords it, the object can support the extremes of both anarchist and staunchly conservative theories of art. The split impulses, I believe, can be traced back to Duchamp's own enigmatic writing, where he is at once a self-proclaimed iconoclast and a preserver of the most oppressive strain of traditionalaesthetic value. The conservative interpretation of the readymade, suppliedin part by Duchamp himself, has allowed the proponents of the Institutional Theory of Art, today's leading candidatefor a definition of art, to overcome the Dada obCopyright 1983, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

THE EFFORT of philosophers in the 1950s

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stacle and to proceed once again in the direction of secure categorization. To some extent, our historical association of Duchamp with Dada has tended to blur the artist's curiously mixed impulses. His conventional side becomes lost in the flurry of Dada slogans such as the following, devoted to revolution: Dada stands on the side of the revolutionary Proletariat Open up at last your head Leave it free for the demands of our age Down with art Down with bourgeois intellectualism Art is dead Long live the machine art of Tatlin Dada is the voluntary destruction of the bourgeois world of ideas' The degree of Duchamp's participation in the Dada movement, itself a nebulous and

ever-changing phenomenon, is uncertain. At times Duchamp openly considered himself a member, yet he would frequently assert his independence as well. Clearly, the above attack on bourgeois "intellectualism" and "ideas' contradicts the thrust of much of Duchamp's art, which he continuously acknowledged to be primarily literary and intellectual. The readymades, closest to the Dada spirit of revolution in their deliberate attempt to shake the conventions of the art institution, can become the vehicles of either aesthetic egalitarianism or elitism, depending mainly on whether they are perceived formally or conceptually, through the theoretical eyes of Aristotle or Plato. As an intriguing physical presence, the readymade destroys the framework of art. Put simply, if a toilet or a bottlerack can provide rewarding formal statisfaction, anything can. Art, as a privileged, isolated category, no longer exists. As a vehicle for the communication of ideas, however, the readymade reaffirms the traditional art world. The found object is art because an artist of special sensibility felt he could convey an important aesthetic idea through it. As a carrier of meaning, the readymade stands apart from what Arthur Danto calls "mere real things."2 Before considering the conservative conceptual approach to the readymade I will first establish the antithetical and radical implications of the formalist position. The formal principle behind the readymade is far from revolutionary and harkens back to Kant's notion of disinterestedness. Wrench a common object from its functional environment, eliminate its potential for practical use, set it upon a stand like objects traditionally devoted to aesthetic scrutiny, and the formal design previously obscured in the object is thrown into the forefront of consideration. Without the film of familiarity that hinders us from seeing beyond its' function, a urinal can become a highly polished, gleaming artwork that combines masculine piping with rounded feminine curves-not unlike the androgenous figures created by Henry Moore. Unnoticed details surface with the encouragement of closer

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objects have been elevated to the stature of artworks. Hence Danto calls his booklength explanation of the readymades and the Pop artifacts they inspired The TransHe figuration of the Commonplace. praises Duchamp, "who first performed the subtle miracle of transforming, into works of art, objects from the Lebenswelt of commonplace existence."5 The "miracle" metaphor tips off Danto's strategy; he is willing to allow that the urinal or bottlerack is art only because they have crossed some mystical borderline where they shed their existence as "mere real things." For Danto, as we shall see later, the readymade ironically makes clear the distance between art and the commonplace. Of course, it is actually impossible to tell which concept moves in which direction. Do common objects rise to art, or does art fall to the everyday? Duchamp considered the possibility of a reverse readymade, a Rembrandt used as an ironing board. He also drew a mustache on a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, presumably to demonstrate that academic art was not sacred, at least no more sacred than a properly displayed urinal. Jack Burnham, inverting Danto's contention that the readymades were somehow elevated, claims that Duchamp's cult "sought to Hence it developed that the true and most imdenigrate sculpture to the status of munportant function of the avant-gardewas not to dane object."6 Pushed to its most radical "experiment," but to find a path along which it would be possible to keep culturemoving in the implication, Duchamp's experiment abomidst of ideological confusion and violence. lishes the line between art and anything Retiring from the public altogether, the avant- else, rendering art a useless and arbitrary garde poet or artist sought to maintainthe high label. All objects become works of art, level of his art by both narrowingit and raising it to the expression of an absolute in which all just as all works of art become not-so-exrelativitiesand contradictiorswould be eitherre- traordinary objects. If you observe a solved or beside the point. "Art for art's sake" urinal in a museum and realize its formal and "pure poetry" appearand subject matteror as art, a formal potential no difcontent becomes something to be avoided like potential ferent from that of a Brancusi or a the plague.4 Moore, there is nothing to stop you from regarding an identical urinal in the Van Even confronting the readymades, these Pelt Library as art. The application of the most banal objects, a formalist need not formal principle is unlimited. If a urinal, forsake the distinction he desires between why not a doorknob? As you leave the art and the common world. Instead of Van Pelt bathroom, stop for a moment seeing that all objects share in potential before the door and consider the knob's the special "aesthetic" quality usually assensuous curve, the muted hue of its cribed only to works in a museum, he brass, the intricate network of scratches marvels at the thought that a few common that line its surface. Capable of such exexamination. Hung upside down and suspended from the ceiling, The Bottlerack cannot possibly be appreciated as a tool for drying bottles.3 Yet the strangeness of its form-the threatening protrusion of metal spikes layered symmetrically along a conical becomes shape-suddenly apparent. Such an interpretation of the readymade can, but does not necessarily, lead to the revolutionary panaestheticism that Mukarovsky hinted at and feared. Formalism has often proved a most conservative enterprise which in no way sanctions the belief that anything and everything can be art. The New Critics sought rather to isolate literature from nonartistic phenomena, to award it special "aesthetic" status, much as Clive Bell privileged painting through "significant form." Formalism can become a type of puritanism where disinterested formal scrutiny permits an object to transcend the vulgar world of use and change. Clement Greenberg discussed the importance of abstract art in exactly this way. The avant-garde artist strives to achieve the full formal potential of his medium and thus arrives at an immutable absolute that divorces high culture from the transient and degraded public culture.

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GOLDSMITH object, but the fact that it has been chosen and the idea governing that choice. . . . That Duchamp's challenge failed to break the rule of the artistic approach is clear, in retrospect. Objects created to provoke and scandalize were soon canonized and collected.9

tended application, Duchamp's readymades suggest the following revolutionary consequences. As Arturo Schwarz puts it,
First of all the difference between the artist and the layman ceases to exist, and every man is endowed with the faculty of creating beauty (In the case of the Ready-mades, simply by deciding that a common object is to be elevated to the status of a work of art). And secondly, the very distinction between life and art is abolished.7

Duchamp throws into doubt the two concepts upon which the traditional humanist sanction of art rests-the special "aesthetic" quality of the artwork and the special sensibility of the artist. The total egalitarianism that results, a democracy of both people and objects, threatens the conventional order of social and aesthetic hierarchy. Morse Peckham, arriving at similar conclusions in his effort to explode accepted theories of art, writes, "The discovery that anything becomes a work of art if you perceive it as a work of art, and that it can be given public status if you place it in an artistic situation, is, according to some critics and a concerned public, fraught with danger for art."8 As I have suggested, one way to sidestep the danger posed by the readymade is to deny or minimize its formal potential in favor of its symbolic or intellectual potential. In his recent article, Karsten Harries proposes that Duchamp's found objects have reinforced the mainstream of academic modern art precisely because they subordinate form to concept. The importance of the urinal, for instance, lies outside the object's physical presence.
The aesthetic appeal of the object is very limited; it gains its meaning only as a gesture directed against the established and the accepted. Duchamp himself spoke of provocation. The title, so obviously at odds with what it names, underscores the provocation.

Capturing the paradox that Fountain combines revolutionary intentions with some he surprisingly traditional tendencies, goes on to write,
Like so much modern art, it is first of all art about art. ... What matters is not the concrete

Fountain is important not as a "concrete object" that levels and demystifies "aesthetic" appeal, but as a "gesture" or "idea." Rather than destroying institutional art, it has fathered a long line of conceptual pieces that promote philosophical inquiry in the scholastic traditioncomplex, self-explorative pieces that question the very nature of their own existence as art. The layman claims that anyone could exhibit a urinal on a pedestal, but the artist did it and did it for a reason. This reason becomes the essential distinguishing factor; the readymade is more that a physical object; it has qualities inaccessible to the senses. It can be "daring, impudent, irreverent, witty and clever,"10 all of which, according to Danto, a commonplace, utilitarian object cannot be. Endorsing his work with meaning, creating a statement about art, the artist works within a traditional context of aesthetic theory and perpetuates that context. Meanwhile, by shifting the grounds from form to concept, the conservative has succeeded in maintaining the privileged status of both the artist, who had the delicacy of insight to make such an experiment, and the object, which is capable of provoking an intellectual interpretation in ways that a "mere real thing' cannot. Although one might be tempted to think otherwise, the conceptual approach to the readymade does not comprise a bourgeois adulteration of Duchamp's revolutionary intentions. Rather, its roots lie in the artist's own theories. A clear indication of his antithetical impulses appears in a prose piece written in 1946 to explain his painting of the period just prior to the readymade experiments. Fully aware of his radical inclinations, Duchamp vehemently asserts that he did not want to be a "slave to landmarks."1 He found himself attracted to Dada mainly because it was "serviceable as a purgative' 12-a

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means of breaking free from a stuffy and restrictive academic institution. Yet the contradictory crux of Duchamp's statement is an affirmation of traditional, transcendent aesthetic value; as Harries contends, he sees his work "as an attempt to restore to painting its literary dimension, to lead it back to the tradition it had forsaken."13 For Duchamp, that tradition is specifically religious, or at least spiritual, and painting becomes important to him as it moves away from the physical toward the mental. He writes,

carries over to the readymades which immediately followed. In an interview with Pierre Cabanne, Duchamp discusses how he selected the objects to be exhibited, claiming that "you have to approach something with indifference, as if you had no aesthetic emotion. The choice of readymades is always based on visual indifference and, at the same time, on the total absence of good or bad taste.'18 In this light the motivation behind the readymade is no different from that of the earlier paintings. Having obliterated the physical influence of the senses and the I wanted to get away from the physical aspect of cultural influence of "good or bad taste," painting.I was much more interest in recreating presumably the artist is left in a mental ideas in painting ... For me Courbethad introduced the physical emphasis in the nineteenth state pure and intellectual. He puts the century. I was interestedin ideas-not merely in found object "at the service of the mind"; visual products. I wanted to put painting once the fact that it has been chosen and now again at the service of the mind. And my paint- bears the meaning of an idea triumphs ing was, of course, at once regardedas "intellec- over its ordinary physical presence. The tual," "literary" painting.14 readymade that so threatens to pull high culture from its ivory tower and down to "Reduce, reduce, reduce,' 15 he states the level of the local restroom, falls prey emphatically, meaning that the physical to the same unwarranted assumptions that nature of painting, the heavy impasto traditionally sustain high culture. The characteristic of the realist or impresreadymade consoles the curator who dissionist's indulgence in the medium, should plays the disturbing piece with the two be eliminated in favor of the uncontaage-old humanist adages: art is timeless minated value of mystical and ineffable (bound to "mind" and not to an era's ideas. Several of Duchamp's statements contingencies) and art reflects an underlyexpress a blatant puritanism, that art ing human denominator that is universal should be the embodiment of spirit, and because it remains free from diverse exthe less body the better. ternal influences. Aside from the rhetoric of disinterestedness, there is little reason the Dada was an extreme protest against physical side of painting. It was a metaphysical to believe that the artist is capable of attitude. 16 stepping out of history, stripping away the physical and cultural contingencies that shape human vision, or even that some Or, intellectual essence would remain after This is the directionin which art should turn: to such a process. Duchamp's theory is an intellectualexpression, ratherthan to an ani- romantic in high Kantian fashion, seeking mal expression.17 the permanent spiritual value exempt from all transient influence, a value that must The apparent disgust with the physical; always be a dubious postulate. Yet it is the belief that art can provide a haven un- the evocation of this suspiciously conventouched by animal limitation; the evocational value that permits the conservative tion of a mysterious metaphysics upon aesthetician to avoid the formalist implicawhich traditional aesthetic value has de- tions of the readymade and to focus on its pended since the romantics and earlierconceptual potential instead. all of these elements indicate the rebel's In one sense, the readymade becomes the perfect vehicle of pure idea-it inremarkably conservative disposition. volves no physical construction. The artDuchamp's attitude toward painting

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GOLDSMITH

ist never gets his hands dirty and produces a work of art through a sheer act of will. "Part of the irony of the 'Readymades," Burnham asserts, "is their very idealism-a consequence of being all idea with no deliberate construction technique on the part of the artist."19 Again, such a consideration leads us away from a formalist interpretation and back to a conceptual one. Duchamp himself writes that the readymade allowed him to "reduce the idea of aesthetic consideration to the choice of the mind, not to the ability or cleverness of the hand [he] objected to in many paintings of [his] generation.'20 Anticipating Danto's belief that the common object is elevated to the status of art and not vice versa, Duchamp claims that he took the objects "out of the earth" and placed them "onto the planet of aesthetics.''21 While Duchamp's phrase rings with tongue-in-cheek hyperbole, the opposition between a higher aesthetic realm and a lower earthy realm conforms to his notion of pure idea and animal body. The difference between a urinal in the museum's bathroom and a urinal in the museum's modern sculpture gallery is that the latter possesses a hidden essence of aesthetic idea and meaning the former entirely lacks. Moreover, the artist has created that idea without any dependence upon vulgar, physical means. The particular dilemma of the readymade is that it confirms the most oppressively conservative formulation of aesthetic theory while it explodes all attempts to contain art within clearly defined boundaries. At the same time that he felt he was placing objects on that exclusive "planet of aesthetics," Duchamp also stressed that the readymades "weren't works of art"; they were objects "to which no art terms applied.22 Despite such claims, and an undeniable interest in disrupting bourgeois sensibility, Duchamp certainly treated his readymades like artworks. If the readymade was intended to liberate the aesthetic nature of all objects, it is hard to see why Duchamp early on decided to limit the number he would produce. Only when they are seen as traditional artworks fraught with meaning can

we understand his refusal to indulge in indiscriminate production. "I wanted to he said, protect my Ready-mades," such a contamination."23 Sim"against ilarly, after many of the original pieces were lost, why did Duchamp supervise the 1964 reproduction of "a signed and numbered edition of his most important Readymades"24 The appearance of these late replicas, and even tJie notion that the objects could be ranked in importance, suggests that Duchamp, at least in practice, did indeed consider his readymades artworks in a quite conventional fashion. If the above activities serve to affirm the privileged nature of the aesthetic object, they also affirm the special role of the artist who created and preserved them. Herschel B. Chipp's praise of Duchamp is typical of the retrospective assessment that perceives the readymade primarily as conceptual art.
Duchamp actually produced very little-a few paintings, drawings and fragmentary writingsyet his superior intellegence and refined sensibility provided a wealth of associated meanings for each of his works, even when, as with the "Ready-mades," he did nothing to the object except to present it for contemplation.25

The attribution of "superior intelligence and refined sensibility" neatly embeds Duchamp in a tradition that sets the artist, in degree if not kind, above the mass of men. If the readymades possess an egalitarian impulse, that impulse is easily lost; does Fountain suggest that any man can create beauty simply by cleansing his doors of perception, or does it celebrate the exclusive power of the artist's penetrating creativity? Frank Lentricchia aptly summarizes the central paradox that has evolved historically out of contradictory romantic motives.
For all of its demystifying and democratic predispositions toward matters social and aesthetic, at the center of romantic thought there is also (as Harold Bloom has not yet tired of telling us) a powerful elitism. This elitism, put forward in the guises of creative genius and various other ideals of originality, would claim that artistic activity-by definition something that artists alone may engage in-is the most deeply humanizing activity; the difficulty is that "we." mankind at

The Readym cdes of Marcel Duchamp large, we nonartists, are by this reckoning excluded from the communityof the most human
sorts of beings.26

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Does Fountain imply that the artist can see in a urinal what will forever remain beyond the intellectual grasp of nonartistic man? In an almost perverse reversal of their power to unsettle-their power to produce the initial shock that must inevitably overwhelm the museum-goer who, having just seen a Rembrandt, suddenly confronts a urinal displayed on equal terms-the readymades forfeit their anarchist provocation. They become, under the light of the conservative theory Duchamp himself fosters, "touchstones"27 for the conventional aesthetic hierarchy. Perhaps, in presenting the conservative side of Duchamp's readymades, I have relied too heavily upon the artist's professed intentions which, after all, carry no more weight than any other interpretation. Moreover, it is impossible to determine how closely Duchamp's statements, all made years after the fact, match the original sentiment with which he first exhibited the found objects. The statements always remain playfully enigmatic, but they possess that aura of intellectualizing that tends to dampen the initial dynamics of real artistic innovation. In a way, the readymades resemble the avantgarde painting of Picasso and Braque-in the assessment of the many forces that brought forth cubism, one thing is certain; it did not rise out of any clearly formulated doctrine. Only years later, well after critics like Apollinaire began to theorize, did Braque finally produce statements that supported the established academic appraisal. Picasso never spoke on the subject. Xavier Rubert de Ventos claims that the artist, as creator and not as critic, always strives to develop an expression that escapes the current critical vocabulary. Revolution in the arts, he says, is "necessary for things to get outside their 'definitions,' so that theorists of art or society would be forced to get rid of their ideological 'gadgets,' "28 Yet the most fierce rebellions eventually become old news and soon supply the ideological gadgetry that

binds the next generation. Even the artist, looking back on the works that stunned the art world, may be susceptible to the theorizing that attempts to bring intellectual order to history. In any case, I have emphasized Duchamp's stated position on his readymades because of its fundamental similarity to the contemporary efforts to define aesthetics that have loosely organized themselves around the Institutional Theory of Art. As Howard Becker notes in his closely related study, this theory marks, as most theories do, "the development of a new aesthetic to take account of work the art world has already accepted' 29-meaning the readymades and the subsequent Pop artifacts that have firmly established themselves in museum culture. Arthur Danto and George Dickie, the philosophers who sport the two leading, and considerably different, versions of the theory, both pursue the same goal: uncover the elusive definition of art that so many others had declared nonexistent.30 In order to do so, they each confront Duchamp and absorb him into their theories by asserting precisely what the artist himself asserted, that the essence of the artwork lies outside the physical object in unseen qualities. In their quest to find the invisible characteristics that inherently unite Fountain and the works of the old masters under the single category of art, both philosophers rely primarily upon a conceptual interpretation of the readymades and display the same sort of conservative aesthetic impulse that accompanied the conceptual approach in Duchamp's later writing. Although he did not provide its name and continues to disagree with Dickie's formulation of it, Danto originated the Institutional Theory of Art in a 1964 article where he made a now-famous claim. "To see something as art," he wrote, "requires something the eye cannot descryan atmosphere of theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld."3' In Dickie's later interpretation of this statement, the "artworld" becomes the interactions of a social organization. For Danto, however, whose approach has not

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changed since the early piece,32 the "artworld" means the conceptual or philosophical basis of art that transcends its physical dimension. He is the first to admit that on an "aesthetic" or formal level, "the distinction between artworks and mere things is inscrutable."33 Therefore, in order to maintain that distinction and prevent art from losing its privileged status, Danto shifts the defining aesthetic characteristics away from the physical and more toward the mental. In an earlier article with the same title as his recent of the book, "The Transfiguration Danto compares a simCommonplace," ple wood crate to an identical object constructed (or selected) by an artist. The first is truly empty, but the second contains something-its "content is the concept of art.'34 Detached from the real world, the second artifact, as Danto puts it, belongs to "a world of interpreted things." 35 Not unlike Duchamp's planet of aesthetics, this world of interpreted things exists as an objectively isolated realm. Its objects remain distinct from identical mere real things not because of someone's subjective categorization of them, but because of inherent qualities-namely, the to carry aesthetic meaning-in ability those objects. Learning that an object is a work of art, Danto tells us, "means that it has qualities to attend to which its untransfigured counterpart lacks, and that our aesthetic responses will be different. And this is not institutional, it is ontological. We are dealing with an altogether different order of things."36 As we have seen, the attribution of special ontological (and empirically unverifiable) status to artworks represents the most oppressively conservative aesthetic theory; it immediately shuts the door on revolution and even speculation. If interpretability is the decisive criterion for art, I see no reason why it is inconceivable that someone could find meaning, formal or philosophical, in any urinal, or conversely, why a perfectly intelligent and educated museum-goer might be incapable of finding any meaning whatsoever in Duchamp's Fountain. Yet Danto wants to cut off the

possibilities at both ends, declaring once and for all that one object is intrinsically art and the other is not. Despite his humanist intentions, Danto suffers from an almost tyrannical idealism. Art, under his conceptual theory, becomes the exclusive intellectual property of those adequate to perceive its inherent spirit. Danto entirely misses the influence of his own subjective perspective; it is no coincidence that the philosopher believes theory to be art's foremost quality and consequently privileges art's theoretical nature. In a revealing passage, Danto states of certain Pop paintings by Lichtenstein,
These paintings are deeply theoretical works, self-conscious to such a degree that it is difficult to know how much of the material correlate must be reckoned in as part of the artwork; so self-conscious are they, indeed, that they almost exemplify a Hegelian ideal in which matter is transfigured into spirit, in this case there being hardly an element of the material counterpart which may not be a candidate for an element in the artwork itself.37

For Danto, objects become art to the degree that their physical nature dissolves into pure philosophical idea, and he falls prey to that Hegelian puritanism which insists that the body and all of its contingencies must be transcended as art evolves into spirit. To place the essence of art in theory is to cut off most people from art and to perpetuate an elite academy. Aesthetic essence lies open only to those scholarly few who have the theoretical knowledge to penetrate it. Another reference to Hegel clearly locates Danto in a line of conventionally exclusive romanticism that oppresses as it purports to liberate. Setting out his intentions in the book's preface, Danto strives to discover the defining characteristics of art that elevate it above the whirling transiency of the mundane-the permanent center of theory exempt from the influence of earthly change. In order to do so, he knows that he must account for the endless cycles of revolution that comprise the history of art, especially the recent movements initiated by Duchamp that seem to defy the very barrier between art

The Readymades of MarcelDuchamp and that chaos of common things. Speaking of Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes, a controversial Pop "sculpture" rendered as close to the commercial packaging as possible, Danto somewhat defensively writes,

205
artifact (2) a set of the aspects of which has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain institution (the artworld).39

As with Danto, the physical characteristics of an object are relatively unimAny definitionthat is going to stand up has acto Dickie, though he locates the cordinglyto indemnifyitself againstsuch revolu- portant tions, and I should like to believe with the Brillo essence of art not in theory but in an Boxes the possibilities are effectively closed and unseen social framework. Art becomes the that the history of art has come, in a way, to an product of a certain type of social behavend. It has not stopped but ended, in the sense ior. "When I call the artworld an instituthat it has passed into a kindof consciousnessof itself and become, again in a way, its own phi- tion," Dickie writes, "I am saying that it losophy: a state of affairs predictedby Hegel.38 is an established practice."40 He never makes explicit, however, whether this Danto wants a definition that will stand "established practice" is universal to invulnerable to revolution, that will ab- mankind or particular to a certain cultural sorb all potential diversity into its univer- group and his failure to specify the definisal rule. Almost frightening in its implica- tion marks one of its chief weaknesses. tions, the passage suggests a not unWhile avoiding the issue of cultural divercommon desire for stability and order, a sity--"It would be enough to be able to desire for some sense of direction and specify the necessary and sufficient condiprogression that overcomes decay, but at tions for the concept of art which we the crucial expense of vitality. History as have'41 (whoever "we" are)-Dickie ina living process of change must yield to sists that his description of the art world the revelation of the pure mind's immuta- defines art without falling into the conserble self-consciousness; history must cease vative aesthetic ideology that has handits motion. Yet even more disturbing than cuffed creativity in the past. Of the many the comprehensible quest for permanence problems involved with a definition that is what Danto places in the privileged seeks to maintain complete artistic freeaesthetic center: philosophical selfdom as it imposes limits on the nature of awareness. Perhaps for the philosopher art, I will briefly focus on a few considerthe development of aesthetics has someations relevant to Duchamp and the how come to an end (not stopped, of readymades. course) with the self-questioning nature of Like Danto, Dickie makes the perplexmodem art, but Danto tells us throughout ing readymade the central example of his his book that this view is rooted in the theory, claiming that "Dadaism . . . most very ontology of art. Either we accept easily reveals the institutional essence of that art is concept and theory, and the art."42 The importance he sees in the consequent belief that modern art ter- readymade is that it brings out an "estabminally culminates an intellectual progres- lished practice" of the art world that was sion Danto associates with a Hegelian previously unnoticed-the conferring of view of the universe, or we are simply the status of art upon an object. Accordwrong. ing to Dickie, this behavior always constiDanto's version of the Institutional tuted a social criterion for art, but in traTheory of Art lies closest to Duchamp's ditional aesthetics it was accepted without conception of aesthetics and is more question. In the act of painting or sculptconservative than Dickie's. Yet it is ing the artist automatically conferred the Dickie, influenced by the growing emphastatus of art upon his creation. "When, sis on sociology in aesthetics, who formu- however, the objects are bizarre," Dickie lates a clear, though endlessly problema- tells us, tic, defintion of art.
A work of art in the classificatory sense is (1) an as those of the Dadaists are, our attention is forced away from the objects' obvious properties

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to a consideration of the objects in their social context. As works of art Duchamp's 'readymades' may not be worth much, but as examples of art they are very valuable for art theory.43

GOLDSMITH

Once again we see the critic shift away from a formal interpretation of the readymade to a conceptual one, absorbing the work into a realm of theory (here, social theory) that subordinates its revolutionary impulse. Danto uses Duchamp to confirm the ongoing philosophical framework of art by focusing on the theoretical implications of the readymades; Dickie uses him to confirm a perpetual social framework of art in like manner. "I am not claiMning," he writes, "that Duchamp and friends invented the conferring of the status of art; they simply used an existing institutional device in an unusual way. Duchamp did not invent the artworld, because it was there all along."44 Although their art worlds are different, both Dickie and Danto seek the underlying institutional substratum that unites the diverse array of artworks of all eras and keeps them distinct from nonartistic objects. On the surface, Dickie's social approach seems to provide a definition that leaves open the possibilities of art in a way that philosophers like Weitz and Liberal Kennick thought impossible. claims such as the following permeate his writing:
Since under the definition anything whatever may become art, the definition imposes no restraints on creativity.45 In addition, every person who sees himself as a member of the artworld is thereby a member.46

The core personnel of the artworld is a loosely organized, but nevertheless related, set of persons including artists (understood to refer to painters, writers, composers), producers, museum directors, museum-goers, theater-goers, reporters for newspapers, critics for publications of all sorts, art historians, art theorists, philosophers of art, and others. These are the people who keep the machinery of the artworld working and thereby provide for its continuing existence. . . . Although I have called the persons just listed the core personnel of the artworld, there is a minimum core within that core without which the artworld would not exist.48

Dickie attempts to avoid the exclusive elitism which developed out of previous definitions of art that posited some privileged "aesthetic" quality as the distinguishing criterion. Here, anything can be art and anyone can act as artist. But as William Blizek acutely observes, Dickie implies throughout that the art world is more limited than his definition ideally suggests.47 For instance, who actually comprises the art world and confers the status of art upon objects? Dickie responds,

art world is Cores within cores-the clearly composed of a social hierarchy that distinguishes status between members. While anyone may become a member simply be seeing himself as one, it does not necessarily allow him to enter the inner circle and share in the power enjoyed there. Furthermore, can anyone actually act on behalf of the art world? In his study of the art institution, Becker demonstrates that Dickie's theoretical egalitarianism, supposedly based on "established practice," proves an illusion in reality. "A relevant feature of art worlds," he writes, "is that, however their position is justified, some people are commonly seen by many or most interested parties as more entitled to speak on behalf of the art world than others."49 In other words, Duchamp could display an unaltered urinal in a museum because he had already established his status as an artist in the art world. In a revealing section, Dickie indicates that he too subscribes to the principle of social-aesthetic hierarchy that reinforces the privileged position of the artist in a traditional romantic manner. Comparing a salesman who displays commonplace wares before a customer and Duchamp who converts commonplace artifacts into art, both of whom offer their objects "for appreciation," Dickie explains that the commercial goods are not art because the salesman does not perceive himself as acting on behalf of the art world. Of course, he could, like Duchamp, transform them into artworks, "but such a thing probably would not occur to him."'5 The artist retains his

The Readymandes of Marcel Duchamp

207 tional history of aesthetic philosophy, one must confront the deconstructive quality of the idea it carries, an idea that denies precisely the desired traditional history. If one sanctions the readymade's social nature, one must confront its leveling formal potential that renders social context negligible. It is not mandatory to act on behalf of the art world to find formal satisfaction in any urinal. And finally, sanctioning the formal approach does not necessarily lead to revolutionary equality among all objects and people. As we have seen, it is just as possible that this mere real thing, this urinal or bottlerack, has been transfigured by a special mind into the elite realm of art. No matter what he intended with his experiment, Duchamp created a Chinese box of unaccountable paradoxes. Like Keats' Urn, the readymade teases us out of thought. For whatever explanation or interpretation we can propose, it always sports a contradictory answer, leaving an elusive portion of itself outside the boundaries of any definition of art.
Herschel B. Chipp, ed., Theories of Modern Art, (University of California Press, 1968), p. 376. 2 Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Harvard University Press, 1981). The phrase comes from the title of the book's first chapter, "Works of Art and Mere Real Things." 3 The Bottlerack was orginally meant to be displayed in this manner. See Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp (New York, 1969), p. 31. 4 Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture (Boston, 1961), p. 5. 5 Danto, p. vi. 6 Jack Burnham, Beyond Modern Sculpture (New York, 1968), p. 30. 7 Schwarz, p. 41. 8 Morse Peckham, Man's Rage for Chaos (New York, 1965), p. 69. 9 Karsten Harries, "The Painter and the Word," Bennington Review, 13 (1982), 24. 10 Danto, pp. 93-4. i Chipp, p. 394.
12 Ibid.

position in the "minimum core" of the art world, his special sensibility distinguishing him from salesmen and other men. Finally, we must ask what it means to act on behalf of the art world. If one aspect of the readymade's effect is to disturb or perhaps even destroy the sacred notion of institutional art, can we rightfully say that Duchamp was acting on behalf of the art world? True, the found objects can be interpreted as art about art, but as we have seen, their self-reflection is meant, at least in part, to refute the very concept of art; they work within a social or theoretical context only to undermine that context. Dickie avoids the deconstructive tendency of the readymade by focusing interpretation on the social behavior it exemplifies and conservatively perpetuates, but at the expense of other implications. The readymade is important for one reason only; it demonstrates the conferring of the status of art. The selfdestructive meaning that it carries as a conceptual vehicle and the leveling potential of its formal dimension are entirely ignored. The "open" definition of art based on social relationships becomes as limiting as any other definition, suggesting the necessarily conservative nature of the critic who partakes in the defining process. As its name implies, the Institutional Theory of Art, in Danto's or Dickie's formulation, marks a conservative effort to organize the aesthetic experience that is at least confusingly diverse and perhaps outright chaotic. Both versions of the theory limit the range of our responses to art by selecting a single characteristic as the decisive classifying criterion. Both versions manage to account for the Duchamp readymade in a way that reinforces an already present institution and excludes the revolutionary potential that would disrupt that institution. Yet the many sides of the readymade that are ignored or suppressed act as testimony against the possibility of aesthetic definition. No matter what type of approach one takes, the readymade has a paradoxical alternative that refutes the approach. If one sanctions its conceptual nature and thus hopes to continue a tradi-

Harries, 20. Chipp, pp. 393-4. 1i Ibid., p. 393. 16 Ibid., p. 394. 17 Ibid., p. 395. 18 Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (New York, 1971), p. 48. 19 Burham, p. 29. 20 Ann D'Harnoncourt, Marcel Duchamp (New
13 14

208 York: The Museum of Modern Art and Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973), p. 275. 21 Ibid., pp. 275-6.
22
23 24 25

GOLDSMITH 33 Danto, p. 30. 34 Danto, "The Transfiguration of the Commonplace," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XXXIII, no. 11 (1974), 148. 35 Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, p. 35. 36 Ibid., p. 99. 37Ibid., p. 111. 38 Ibid., p. vii. 39 George Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (Corell University Press, 1974), p. 34.
40 41 42

Cabanne,

p. 48.

Criticism (University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 216-17. 27 Chipp, p. 368. 28 Xavier Rubert de Ventos, Heresies of Modern Art (Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 5. 29 Howard Becker, Art Worlds (University of California Press, 1982), p. 145. 30 Two central articles in the effort to deny the definability of art are Morris Weitz, "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XV, no. I (1956), 27-35, and William E. Kennick, "Does Traditional Aesthetics Rest On a Mistake," Mind, 67, no. 267 (1958), 317-34. 31 Danto, "The Artworld." Journal of Philosophy, 61 (1964), 580. 32 Danto repeats the above phrase almost verbatim on page 135 of the 1981 Transfiguration of the Commonplace.

26 Frank Lentricchia, After the New

Schwarz, p. 45. Ibid., p. 449. Chipp, p. 368.

Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., p. 32. 43 Ibid., pp. 32-3. 44 Ibid., p. 33. 45 Ibid., p. 49. 46 Ibid., p. 36. 47 William Blizek, "An Institutional Theory of Art," British Journal of Aesthetics, 14 (1974), 146.
48

Dickie, p. 31.

Dickie, pp. 35-6.

49 50

Becker, p. 151. Dickie, p. 38.