Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was an artist whose life, artwork, and play were thoroughly merged and the separation between his art and his play completely dissolved.  He changed our understanding of art more dramatically than any other artist, and the consequences of his thinking continue to this day.  He enabled numerous artists, in a variety of different directions, to move into unexplored territory, unknown spheres in his own time, and in that sense, he was also a pioneer of Play Art.

Result of a 4-year old

To begin with, our language is not exactly logical.  We use the word “play” in the realm of music, we play an instrument; we also use the term in a theatrical and cinematic context, but not in “artwork” or other creative activities even though the domain of art (versus life or work) is not very different from the musical one.  On the other hand, you might be able to play with paints in an exuberant and carefree way, and even as a novice you may get respectable results. Trying to play the piano in the same uninitiated manner will surely annoy your neighbors.  Our linguistic separation seems arbitrary and inconsistent, it cannot be considered real or absolute in any sense.

Duchamp did not accept the conventional delineations.  Thus he made a very strong effort to combine art and chess.  In the conventional view, chess is categorized as play whereas art is not.  It is certain that he did not see it that way.  He suggested that his activity of playing chess be considered a component of his artistic output.  Duchamp maintained: “I have come to the conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”  After Duchamp moved back to Paris in 1923, it is said that he abandoned his career as an artist in favor of playing chess for 45 years, the rest of his life.  This is certainly an extreme view of his affairs, for him, the separation truly did not exist.  However, he himself writes that painting interested him less and less "I play day and night and nothing interests me more than to find the right move.” In 1927 his bride, Lydie, glued all his chess pieces to the board because he spent his honeymoon week studying chess. They were divorced only three months later.

Art historians had to deal with Duchamp’s eccentric fusion of disparate activities.  Bradley Bailey writes: “Duchamp’s identity as a chess player is so thoroughly interfused with his work as an artist that the two activities are aesthetically and conceptually inseparable.”  There is no question that in his life and in his art play was virtually the dominant force.  Calvin Tomkins, the author of his biography, writes: “Marcel Duchamp was the playful magus of modern art, the inveterate gamester who turned old truths inside out and made us rethink what art was, or could be.”

The complex story of Duchamp’s excursions into the realm of chess is only one aspect of his capricious personality.  He was also the most prominent member of Dada (1916 to 1922), a radical cultural movement that was primarily anti-war, anti-establishment, and anti-art.  Interestingly, Dada lauded play as the most cherished human activity.  This thinking was based on Nietzsche’s admonition to live with play as the highest priority.  Richard Huelsenbeck, a cofounder of Dada, writes: “Dadaists are anti-masses because mass culture destroys the play instinct and creativity.”  Unfortunately, historians and critics are often victims of prevailing attitudes.  While they always point out the playful elements of Dadaism – wordplay, humor, the child, the trickster, games of chance and chess – they generally shy away from naming them playful as such.

The rebellious environment of the Dada movement was fertile ground for Duchamp’s revolutionary and shocking creations.  His most notorious escapade was his “Fountain,” an ordinary, commercially produced urinal that he submitted to an exhibition by the Society of Independent Artists in New York.  The embarrassed committee decided not to show the work.  The press regarded it as an unmentionable object and referred to it as a “bathroom appliance.”  This practical joke became one of the most influential art works of the twentieth century and launched an artistic revolution.  Duchamp coined the term “readymade” for this type of creation.  By simply choosing an ordinary object and signing it, it becomes art by the artist’s decision.

The year of this historical exhibition was 1917.  In the general view, the first of Duchamp’s readymades was his Bicycle Wheel, which he made in Paris in 1913.  At that time he had not yet developed the concept of the readymade.  He assembled it strictly for his own enjoyment and he strongly emphasized: "Please note that I did not want to make a work of art out of it."  When he formulated the concept of readymades in 1915, the Bicycle Wheel also did not fit his explanation.  Readymades were in essence “found objects” (another term for the same principle) that were unaltered by the artist.  Since the Bicycle Wheel was a construction and therefore altered, it was later shoehorned into the same category as an “assisted” readymade.

It needs to be pointed out that this classification does not associate the Bicycle Wheel with a distinct art form.  It designates merely the media or the production process comparable to calling a picture an oil painting, a tapestry, or a collage, etc.  For a painting, it is a significant distinction whether it is an impressionistic, or an expressionistic, an abstract, or a pop art painting.  Since the Bicycle Wheel is an art object to be played with, it is perfectly appropriate to align it with the art form of Play Art.  We certainly would not want to call it a toy.  In the same vain, it is inadequate to keep calling toys created by artist simply toys.  They are a world apart from the ordinary toys, which usually come into existence by various teams and committees.  Therefore, it is much more suitable and accurate to include them in Play Art as well.

Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel is distinguished by an additional important criterion.  While the other works of Duchamp were clearly part of his artistic output, this object was something he built for himself, for personal use.  He built it for his own diversion and recreation, he played with it.  Later in his career he wrote: “In 1913, I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn.”  Standing in front of this silly construction, it begs to be spun.  We all have an urge to set a free wheel or disk in motion, be it a pinwheel or any other round mechanical device.  This spontaneous initiative is actually a joyful way to play.  Even simply watching the turning wheel is fun, it is an enjoyable, little spectacle that puts a smile on your face.  Duchamp writes: “ To set the wheel tuning was very soothing, very comforting, a sort of opening of avenues on other things than material life of every day. I liked the idea of having a bicycle wheel in my studio.”  With these words he identifies exactly the fundamental difference between the play mode and the mode of ordinary life.  In play we are removed from the mundane burdens, struggles and worries that the workday can present.  The play mode liberates us from the treadmill of the survival instinct, and its opposite, the play instinct, is the source of creativity and art. It is remarkable that Duchamp found this simple contraption to facilitate such a shift in consciousness and to access the cornucopia of unencumbered enjoyment, thought, and creativity.  He writes further: “Obviously, the wheel must have had a great influence on my mind, because I used it almost all the time from then on."  So he confirms the beneficial effects of this playful activity, a shift in the paradigm of the mind.  It is not surprising that he did not use the word “play” but that is what he meant.  At his time, such euphemisms were standard in the art world, and they persist even today.

The originals of the Bicycle Wheel and the Fountain were both lost.  After Duchamp moved to New York, his sister threw the Bicycle Wheel out as useless junk.  The Fountain was thrown into the garbage in New York.  Today, there are a considerable number of replicas displayed in various museums.  Nowhere is the turning of the wheel permitted, and in this way the object looses its deeper meaning.

The main purpose of the wheel was the playful experience it provided for Duchamp.  As he described it, it had a transformative quality for his mind.  A Zen master might call this transformation a “higher state of consciousness.”  In Zen, this consciousness is not easily reached.  It requires arduous and disciplined meditation, often taking years to achieve.  It requires the elimination of “attachments,” the pesky survival mechanisms of ordinary life.  Duchamp managed to escape these “things of material life” in an instant by spinning the wheel.  Obviously he enjoyed these benefits and he made this activity a habit.  Since the play mode is the source of creativity, this diversion may even have made him a better artist.

While this activity or experience was of extreme importance to his wellbeing, he did not attempt to make it a part of his artistic communication.  At that time, he remained focused on the tangible object.  To communicate such uplifting experiences to an art audience became the ambition of Lygia Clark in 1960.  

Ernst Lurker 2009