Drawing on Art: Duchamp and Company

Concluding Remarks: Mirrorical Returns

219 Ђ Concluding Remarks Mirrorical Returns It is no longer necessary for artists to die: they are embalmed while they are still alive. This danger goes by the name of success. octavio paz, “price and meaning” (1963) Legacies This study concluded with an examination of the apparatus of spectatorship as the setup that would determine the construction of its position in the public sphere (with particular reference to the institution of the museum) in the works of Duchamp, Matta-Clark, and Wilson. It explored how the social and institutional scaffolding of spectatorship is driven by a critique of commodification implied in visual consumption that brought into play considerations of the work’s exposition, that is, its physical and institutional modes of presentation and display . However, before bringing this study to a close, some additional reflections are in order, namely, as regards the nature of spectatorship and its creative impetus and potential. The extent and persistence of collaborative or appropriative activities by artists drawing on the idea of art with Duchamp, or appropriating and redeploying his works in his wake, confronts us with the question, why is this so? Certainly, the idea that art need not persist in its visual manifestations and that it could pursue a conceptual destiny that would be less liable to succumb to the forces of commodification has held great attraction for both artists and spectators alike. However, Duchamp’s theoretical positions and their popularization alone are unable to fully account for the continued influence of his ideas today, suggesting the necessity of further inquiry into his artistic practice, especially in regard to his elaboration of spectatorship as interactive exchange and play of ideas. 220 / Concluding Remarks Does the activation of spectatorship help explain the continued collaborative and appropriative potential and legacy of Duchamp’s works? The analyses of his works starting with the readymades revealed that they act as devices that trigger the viewer’s engagement, creative response, and play. But is there also an ethical impetus implied in not simply soliciting the engagement of the spectator but mandating his or her response? By implicating the spectator in the making of a work, Duchamp was doing more than simply redeeming the viewer from the passivity implied in the artwork’s reception and consumption. By requiring the spectator to partake in the creative process along with the author, he implicated him or her in the process of artistic making, understood no longer simply in terms of selfexpression but now as an act of critical responsibility. Awakening and sustaining this critical faculty in the spectator, Duchamp resisted the foreclosure of his ideas in the guise of artistic influence. Noting his reputation as the “Dadda of Dada” and the “Grandpa of Pop,” Grace Glueck questioned him about the influence of his work on younger artists. Duchamp responded, “Influence is too disparaging a word. It’s rather been a meeting of ideas.”¹ He contested the use of the word “influence,” which appeals to the myth of the artist as originating and validating source by valorizing spectatorship. He suggested that it is more appropriate to regard the relations between his works and future spectators/artists as a “meeting of ideas,” thus privileging intellectual exchange as forum and fulcrum for the creative act. In so doing, he also challenged the idea of artistic legacy, redefining its impetus as an engagement with the ideas of others rather than himself. Thus, Duchamp’s ironic legacy is not simply reducible to claims of personal legacy or expression, since the issues that it lays on the table for the future spectators or artists will continue to be the active locus of difference and debate. Duchamp’s reluctance to appeal to influence reflects his critique of authorship and his valorization of spectatorship as the other pole in the production of art. Reprising his designation of the artist as a “medium ” presented earlier in his talk “The Creative Act,” he revisited his formulation in his extensive interviews with Pierre Cabanne in 1966: Concluding Remarks / 221 I believe very strongly in the “medium” aspect of the artist. The artist makes something, then one day he is recognized by the intervention of the public, of the spectator; so later he goes on to posterity. You can’t stop that, because, in brief, it’s a product of two poles—there’s the pole of the one who...