The Ready-Made

The Ready-Made

This is a replica of the Ready-Made called “The Bicycle Wheel” created by Marcel Duchamp at his atelier in Paris 1913. Duchamp liked to sit by his fire place and watch the fire. ‘Cause I can enjoy watching the fire dance, he said. I imagine that he saw the lights dance in reflection from the spooks of turning wheel.

What I like about this piece is that it has all the elements of the great piece of art work; it has a simple beautiful form with function and moving part. But it wasn’t made by the artist’s hands rather it was just put together what already existed things. By doing so, Marcel Duchamp expanded the concept of what art work can be.

Around the same time the famous International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York also know as the Armory Show was a big success and really open the door to the American Modernism. With victory in the War and becoming the new industrial power, the modernism flourished in US, and later into Dada and Surrealism.

At the Armory show Marcel Duchamp exhibited a painting called “Nude descending the stairway” It was one of the most controversial pieces in the show because it contained elements of time and movement. How do you express time and movement in a painting?

A couple of years later he created the most well known ready-made piece called “The Fountain”, and tried to exhibit at the Independent Show but failed. It became the most reproduced art piece today.

The Fountain is like the Bicycle Wheel, it’s a clever choice from an ordinary subject.　It has nice curved line with porcelain’s smooth skin; it has all elements of a good piece of art work. Later he even used invisible air in Paris to create a piece called “5-cc”

5-cc was made for his friend in California, what a wonderful gift that would be. Human brain feels most happy when thinking for someone you know. It may be the time to buy an original art work for someone you know today.

The point here is the ready-made object expands the concept of what can be an art piece. By using the media or materials that never been used or even considered. Even art piece didn’t have to be made by the artist himself anymore.

Duchamp had a long interest in movement, as you may say that the Bicycle Wheel was a first piece of kinetic art. When Alexander Calder made moving sculpture in 19xx, it was rightfully named “Mobile” by Marcel Duchamp.

It’s the first assemblage in a way or you may say “it’s an installation object” in today’s art. It’s an assembled piece which leads to assemblages like the one famous piece by Robert Rauschenberg.

The ready-mades are the art objects that lead all these new art concepts and style in today’s art. Because the Ready Made expanded the envelop of what visual art can be.

Change always comes from within the mind.


YowYez
April, 2014