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Fine Art Dissertation Daniela CordiUniversity College Chichester2008

What you seeis notwhat you get

Analysing the critical function of art through an interpretation of the roles of creativity, image and object as reflected in the works of Marcel Duchamp and Sigmar Polke.

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Contents

List of figures 3 - 4

Introduction 5 - 6

Chapters

1 Creativity 7 - 12

2 To see and to look 13 - 18

3 Image and object 19 - 26

4 Marcel Duchamp 27 - 35 5 Sigmar Polke 36 - 47

Conclusion 48 - 49

Bibliography 50 - 53

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List of figures

Cave painting of a bull in Lascaux Grotto, near Montignac, France.Image [online] available from:http://www.whytraveltofrance.com/ images/lascauxA.jpg Accessed: 10/10/07

Pablo Picasso, Head of a Bull, 1943, assemblage of handlebar and saddle of a bicycle (16 x 1/8" high)Image [online] available from:http://ttrefuge.proboards55.comAccessed: 3/09/07

Reversible vase, 1977, created for Queen Elisabeth’s Silver Jubilee.(maker unknown)Image [online] available from:http://psyc.queensu.ca/~flanagan/PSYC100/lecture1/lecture1.htmlAccessed: 10/10/07

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, porcelain urinal, sat on its back on a pedestal, signed by the artist under the name of Richard Mutt. As photographed by Alfred Stieglitz for P.B.T. The Blind Mind, No. 2 May 1917(From plate No. 37 of The Dada Reader, A Critical Anthology, ed., 2008, exhibition catalogue, Tate Publishing.)

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1964, replica, assemblage of a bicycle’s wheel and a wooden kitchen stool (50 ½” high). The original was assembled by the artist for the Exhibition Climax in 20th Century Art, in 1913.(From plate No. 154 Duchamp Manray Picapia, ed., 2008, exhibition catalogue, Tate Publishing)

Sigmar Polke, Rasterzeichnung (Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald),1963,Poster paint, pencil, and rubber stamp (37 5/16 x 27 3/8"). Collection Raschdorf(From plate No. 7 Sigmar Polke: The Three Lies of Painting, ed., 1997 Thames & Hudson)

Sigmar Polke, Bunnies, 1966, synthetic polymer on linen (58 3/4 x 39 1/8 “)Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest and Purchase Funds, 1992Image [online] available from:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/140/320408907_c5e7c3766e.jpgAccessed: 01/11/07

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Sigmar Polke, The Axis of Time, 2007, mixed media on polyester fabric(10 x 16 ft)Venice Biennale: Think With the Senses - Feel With the Mind. Art in the Present Tense. Image [online] available from:http://www.flickr.com/photos/80389077@N00/577650643/Accessed: 01/10/07

Sigmar Polke, The Axis of Time, 2007, (paintings jointly titled), mixed media on polyester fabric (10 x 16 ft)Venice Biennale: Think With the Senses - Feel With the Mind. Art in the Present Tense. (Photographed by the author)

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Introduction

The aim of this dissertation is to examine processes behind “the making

of art” and to assess how they provide us with vital explorative and adaptive

means that aid our critical abilities.

It will show how creativity, generally assumed to be a merely gratifying interest,

hides a forceful imaginative ability that serves two purposes: firstly projecting the

subject’s inner images (conscious and subconscious) onto the outer world and

secondly establishing connections between visible things. This can have therapeutic

effects as well as a cognitive function, originating unconventional associations that

at least offer an evaluation of reality alternative to mainstream canons; if not an

altogether revolutionary approach that opposes what is commonly perceived as the

only possible truth.

In a visual world such as ours, where “power/knowledge” - the “discourse” in

Faucaldian terms - is produced through (artificial) images, creativeness assumes a

new decisive role in counterbalancing control.

The thesis will show how inventiveness is strictly entwined with the act of seeing,

allowing for a pondered understanding of what surrounds us.

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The fundamental principle behind any creative act, in the realm of the visual arts,

lies in the ability to use sight as a vehicle for providing information about our

surroundings.

It will also be shown how visual perception could be deceptive. Although reliable

enough to still offer a crucial survival instrument, our sensorial observations are not

“absolute” but “relative” in the sense that they can be subject to various

interpretations. It is the plurality of attributed meanings that allows finding more than

one solution to a specific problem. We also come to recognize the importance of

context in the reception of images/objects. These can become symbols (signifiers or

codes) for abstract concepts. The decoding of those signs are subject to the altering

of our cultural points of views, making us conclude that there are multiple “ways of

seeing”.

Instrumental to this study is the brief analysis carried out on two of the most famous

ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp, whom, with his playful and mischievous attitude,

offered an anarchist approach to the making and the reception of art. This threw the

seeds not only for the majority of the art-movements that followed him, but also for

post-modernism.

Sigmar Polke displays an equally inquisitive stance, shifting his interests from arts to

politics, to the creative act and the magic involved in it, and thus relying on the

interconnectedness of all visible things.

The three key elements of “creativity” (here analysed through the lens of Anthony

Storr’s study), “seeing” and “object” will provide a matrix to sustain and contextualise

the argument. The work of Duchamp and Polke will be juxtaposed to highlight how

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perception is subject to intuitive, spontaneous processes as well as cultural modes.

This is important in order to form a critical comprehension of how reality is narrated.

1

Creativity

How to understand the world through the act of re-creation

Creativity as play

From sublimation of instinctual urges to a survival tool

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According to psychoanalytical theories, creativity responds to a basic human

instinct that allows the sublimation and projection of subconscious urges, as well as

enabling a basic cognitive act.

Starting as a need to grasp the world, a playful act through which we aim at

replicating the visible around us, we use creativity to produce original outcomes,

which are nonetheless “copies” of pre-existing models.

This skill to “re-create” what is seen relies on the capacity to attribute meaning to

the visible. This means the more “open” or uncertain the attribution of significance

is, the higher the possibilities for interpretation. Regardless of the media or modes

chosen, “the making of art” as an extension of creativity does not only express

aesthetic desires or therapeutic needs but, a reflection/response to reality, it aids

humans to analyse and criticise what constitutes the real as well as making the

world a more manageable and desirable place to inhabit.

In his Dynamics of Creation (1972), Anthony Storr gives an account of the various

reasons for creativity, and of the many possible reasons investigated, one view

relies on the human need to understand the world where depicting it is a way to

reach this aim. The activity of drawing executed by Palaeolithic’s primitives, of

which the Lascaux cave is a famous example (fig. 1), embodies a “practical rite

designed to help the primitive in his pursuit of the animal” (Storr, 1976, p.177).

Facing a great amount of potentially fatal risks, man extended and deepened his

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perception of the world by representing it. Extrapolated by Herbert Read’s Icon and

Idea, Storr quotes a fascinating account of a ritual perpetuated by African Pygmies.

Fig.1

Cave painting, Lascaux, France

The ceremony is described by the anthropologist Frobenius, and recalls the activity

of drawing as a passage to “ realize the ‘object’ upon which magical powers were

to be exercised and which was later to be pursued in reality” (Storr, p.178). The rite

culminates when an arrow is shot into the neck of an antelope drawn on the dirt,

while pronouncing words of auspice. Moments later the men leave for the hunt.

Drawing becomes a tool to put into view the object of desire; creating a likeness of

the object would give the pygmies the impression of having a power over its

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materialization. Acting out a performance that involved the “figurative” presence of

the animal, helped the tribe to have more control over their emotions once they

would have to face the real creature.

Emphasising the limits of an argument that sees the creative attitude responding

exclusively to a neurotic impulse, Storr addresses Freud’s thesis on creativity as an

activity of sublimation of instinctual urges. As Storr highlights, pre-genital desires

are thought to be the drive behind the artist’s activity:

… according to Freud’s point of view, the artist must presumably suffer from some unusual overemphasis of his infantile sexuality, or some degree of failure to attain ‘genitality’ (sexual maturity). Or why would he need the special sublimation implicit in the artistic impulse? (Storr, pp. 20-1)

Storr finds this thesis reductive: if a work of art is merely conceived to be a

surrogate of sexual or self-preservative urges, then art, as well as play, cannot be

seen as an adaptive, cognitive act, but one which works against survival.

Ernest Jones is quoted to oppose Freud’s view and to propose that not only

sublimation, but “the most extreme denial” of infantile enjoyments is realised by

bringing out orderliness out of chaos. Storr sees the playful aspect of art much

more than just a fulfilling activity that offers a refuge from the world. Both art and

play enhance and deepen our appreciation and understanding of reality, rather

than providing just an escape from it. Therefore, without completely dismissing

Freud’s theories, which the author finds partial, greater emphasis is attributed to

creativity as an act of re-creation. Art is subsequently seen as an activity that

“serves a valuable function in the human scheme of things” (Storr, 1976, p.149).

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Carrying on his investigation, Storr draws on the analogies between human and

animal play. Desmond Morris’s The biology of art is cited as a source to analyse

the undertaking of “self-rewarding activities” in animals - mostly primates. It is

observed how “activities for activities’ sake” are often initiated by animals that have

already “their survival problems under control” (1976 p.156) and that have a

surplus of energy to which they need to find an outlet. Storr questions what real

advantage comes from such activity and finds that in subsequent researches

undertaken, Morris succeeds in providing a pertinent description of the use of art

and play as “self-rewarding activities” that hide a survival need. Both man and other

primates require constant stimulation to enable their nervous system to function at

the best of its capabilities. If there are no direct external stimuli, the animal seeks

them or creates them. A distinction is made between animals defined as

“specialists’ and those called “opportunists”. Those that depend on defined,

“specialised” techniques for their survival, relax when that technique finds

realisation. “Opportunists”, on the other hand, rely for survival on any chance, thus

being constantly alert. Their nervous system is used to continuous stimulation,

which they crave when the latter is somehow impaired. This is why some caged

animals resent the inactivity of captivity: boredom inevitably precedes restlessness,

which might lead to self-destruction.

It is in this latest analysis that Morris sees the real reasons behind the creative act.

Some of the activities in which man indulges himself and which are not

immediately related to survival or reproduction, are adaptive in the sense that they

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provide additional stimulation to the nervous system, keeping it alert and averting

boredom.

In the human zoo this creativity principle…[carries] the individual on to such high planes of experience that the rewards are endless …[F]ine arts philosophy and the pure sciences … not only effectively combat under-stimulation, but also at the same time make maximum use of man’s most spectacular physical property - his gigantic brain. (Morris, 1969, pp 1194-5)

Storr comes to the conclusion that what drives the visual artists has its origin in the

need to understand the world through sight, that is, in the necessity to exert an

attitude that derives from the exploratory behaviour characteristic of primates

(Storr, 1976, p.188). We have better chance of survival if we know how to use the

right resources to sustain our endurance and if we know where the perils lay in

order to avoid them or fight them.

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2

To see and to look

Forming theories through visual perception

How the act of looking has changed in a world of hyper-realities

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The (Western) world we live in is saturated by images that serve strategic

propagandistic and political agendas of which we are only partially aware. The

language of advertising has become so imbedded in the ordinary vehicles of

information that facts can easily be manipulated and narrated like slogans void of

any substantial truth.

The threats we face today are posed by virtual, as well as real, enemies that an

eye addicted to artificial images might no longer be able to identify. In exercising

creativity, the subject exploits the ambiguity of man’s visual perception, thus

proposing an alternative way of seeing that question the dogmatic hegemony of

hyper-realities and their fallacies.

For Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest artists and original inventors of the

Renaissance, sight was the noblest and most certain sense.

The one that provided access to “experience”, showing us how nature works

accordingly to mathematical rules. Any knowledge that could not be certified by the

eye was, for him, unreliable. From Leonardo onwards, this view is still mostly

shared today. The belief that seeing equals knowledge is widely accepted, at least

in popular culture, as the way of saying explicates: “I believe it when I see it” (St.

Thomas). Sight is, among the five senses, that which seems most reliable. It is

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through sight that we formulate theories: prior to the articulation and expression of

hypothesis through language, is the act of looking.

With regards to speculations on how we come to form theories through visual

perception, journalist Barrie Zwicker explains that the Greek root thea is in both

theasthai, which means “to look”, and in theorema, whose meanings are:

“speculation”, “intuition”, “theory”. Behind the etymological concept of theory is “to

look”. This concept was then developed, through “contemplation”, into “mental

concept” (in Chiesa et al, 2007, p.328). Modern psychology explains that what

people see is not merely transferred on the retina as a faithful copy of the original.

The image of the retina is created through a complex act of perception where

personal experience is determinant in the evaluation of the shapes apprehended.

Psychoanalysis goes even further by asserting that “the modernist notion that to

see is to know” (Rose, 2001, p.103) has no reason to exist.

The notion of the unconscious focuses attention on the uncertainties of subjectivity and on the uncertainties of seeing; psychoanalysis is especially interested in visual confusion, blind-spots and mistakes. (Rose, 2001, p. 103)

If vision is influenced by the subjectivity of experience, cultural understanding is

pivotal in attributing meaning to images. “Subjectivity is thus culturally as well as

psychically constructed” (Rose, 2001 p. 104). We learn to know the world through a

series of prohibitions and permissions. If, as children, these rules teach us ‘how to

behave’, as adults these codes of conduct are extended to the realm of the visible,

where certain ways of seeing are more acceptable than others and thus are

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reinforced each time we look. The relevance this has on the critical function of art,

is addressed by Gillian Rose in the first chapter of her book Visual Methodologies

(2001). Acknowledging Stuart Hall’s analysis of culture “as a process, a set of

practices” where members of society produce and exchange meanings which are

attributed to what is going on around them, Rose explains that this ensemble of

“made meanings structure the way people behave … in … everyday [life]” (2001, p.

6). In Western culture the visual occupies a fundamental role, insofar that Martin

Jay (Rose, 2001, p. 7) uses the term “ocular-centrism” to define the omnipresence

of images created by visual technologies through which we come to know the world

we live in. Rose addresses the contemporary debate sparked by various writers

and philosophers, arguing these technologies render a vision of the world that “is

never innocent” (2001, p. 6) because they are culturally constructed to offer

particular interpretations of it.

In turn, “the interpretation of visual images must address questions of cultural

meaning and power” (Rose, 2001, pp. 2-3). In a world where we exchange notions

and products through imagery, where we rely on the latter to consume and to

communicate, to be informed and entertained; in a era where images have become

integral part of the fabric of our existence, having more access to them raises the

question whether we are closer to reality or more distant from it. Journalist Paolo

Jormi Bianchi suggests “technologies have destroyed images” and that “no image

can longer be considered as proof … of whatever fact has been happening in

reality” (in Chiesa et al, 2007, pp. 357-8).

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This apocalyptical view validates the necessity to employ a creative and critical

interpretation of those modes that constitute our “visuality”.

Bianchi’s observation is in line with Walter Benjamin’s belief that the reproducibility

of art objects implied a change in the impact those objects had in people’s lives.

Benjamin’s theory had set the ground for much speculation on the perceptual,

cultural - and political - revolution caused by the technological (now digital)

production of images. Extending Benjamin’s thought, the philosopher Jean

Baudrillard (1981) argues that not only the threshold between real and unreal has

become very feasible, but that we live in a society dominated by simulations or

simulacra, a “hyper-reality” where images are no longer related to actual facts, yet

they stand for the only accessible certainty. Art critic John Berger suggests (1972)

that the ability of looking not only at one thing, but also at the relation between

things and ourselves, draws on the critical ability of the artist - and the viewer - to

reflect on the different ways of seeing. In a culture where the predominant view is

the notion that knowledge is delivered and accessed through images, one can

envisage a crucial role played by those subjects that, in the realm of the visual arts,

contemplate and “re-create” images. If, quoting Foucault:

[d]iscourse…[is] the way in which power is generated and flows in society, and is always integrally interwoven with the production of knowledge (Aagerstoun, 2004, p. iii)

then, when knowledge is equated with seeing, the realm of vision becomes another

instrument, if not the most important one, to carry the hegemonic discourse.

Altering our way of seeing is altering our way of understanding the world around us.

Abundance of images do not necessarily make us closer to actuality, nor better

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informed on it; on the contrary, it creates a habitual and distorted perception of the

world where the flat, weight-less and one-dimensional representations become

more real - assume more symbolic weight - than the multifaceted dimension of

reality and its perspectives. In this new universe where replica substitutes the real,

artificial images impair the ability to contemplate (reflect, weight up, ponder, etc.)

what is in front of our eyes.

We truly become passive observers, from explorers of the world to consumers of

images that stand in the way of the world. In Burnett’s vision (2005), ‘a central trope

for the activities of seeing in the modern and postmodern era is the window, as an

entity that frames and mediates the possibilities of vision." By setting a boundary

between the ‘perceived’ and the ‘perceiver’, a separation is established between

the world and those who see it. In this partition Burnett detects what sets:

… the stage, as it were, for that retreat or withdrawal of the self from the world which characterizes the dawn of the modern age . Ensconced behind the window the self becomes an observing subject, a spectator, as against a world which becomes a spectacle, an object of vision. (Burnett, 1995, p.5)

It is in this division, that a misconception takes place: the perception of

images that stand for the world replace the perception of the world.

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3

Image and object

Visual perception and its role in the creative process

Image as object

Object as icon

The transitional object

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If psychoanalysis has taught us that the perception “of the external world is

primarily dependent on our physical (tactile) experience” (Storr, 1976, p.86), Albert

Einstain’s theories on relativism have endorsed the unreliability of the evidence of

the senses. The study of physics has highlighted the limits of our sensory

perception and how different such experience is with regards to other forms of life.

Tastes, smells, colours, tones, etc. are all mental constructions and have no

correspondence in the world of physics. Our experience of the world is an act of

mediation between what is perceived and what is created in our brain. In his book

Perception (1984), Irvin Rock explains that no matter how ambiguous or ambivalent

our perceptions are, they are though mainly correct or “veridical’, enabling us to

survive in the world. And yet, the correctness of our sensorial interpretations is not

derived nor influenced by knowledge. Illusory perceptions do not disappear once

science or physics show us that they are deceitful. Perceptions are the source of

visual information but “they are largely independent of other cognitive processes”

(1984, p. 5).

To understand how we see, Rock suggests we discard what philosophers refer to

as “naïve realism” and embrace the concept “that the mind does not simply record

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reality, but creates its own “picture” (1984, p.3). This is evident when we face

unclear figures that can be read either as a vase or as two faces (fig. 2). If our

knowledge allows it, we will be able to identify Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip,

inserting an additional layer of information to our decipherment. Otherwise, we will

still distinguish the outlines of a male and a female profile - by relying on “internal”

archetypes that allow us to recognise human profiles and not for this failing to

identify the vase’s outlines.

We can conclude that an object’s form and the shapes perceived by the eye could

not always match. Schemata are relied on to apprehend anything we take in and

when something happens to disrupt those existing stereotypes we realize the

ambiguity of visual perception.

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Fig. 2

Reversible vase, 1977

In Analogy-making as Perception (1993, p.2) Melanie Mitchell hypothesizes that

‘percepts’ do not have rigid boundaries so they can ‘overflow’ into each other and

alter accordingly to the circumstances in which the perceiver is in.

Central to all activity is the phenomenon of conceptual slippage, in which, under the pressure of a given context, a concept can ‘slip into’ (i.e. can be recognised as) another conceptually related concept. (Bolland, 1997)

This theory draws attention to the mechanism behind most inventive processes,

from design to engineering, from music composition to science discoveries.

Applying this attitude to the realm of the visual gave form to the unexpected

juxtapositions for which Surrealism is often remembered. It is the ability of

abstraction and analogy-making that allows us to perceive accidental or fortuitous

events as meaningful. In the perception of shapes resides the origin of concept-

formation. Simplifying and abstracting are activities that require a mind capable of

recognising the momentary and partial as elements of a larger picture which

unfolds in a sequence. Abstraction allows for the perception of an object and its

functions independently from its context.

By assembling a saddle and a handlebar, Picasso can evoke a bull (fig. 4). It is

difficult not to mingle the image of the bull with that of a mere conglomerate of a

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bicycle’s parts. Yet one reading does not invalidate the other, while it makes the

viewer constantly shift between the two modes of interpretations.

When the image is raised to the status of icon, it becomes an object with functions.

It turns into a carrier of significance.

Fig. 4

Pablo Picasso, Head of a Bull, 1943, assemblage

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The image of the bull, evocated by a real object, becomes an (symbolic) object

itself, emblem of both Spain and Picasso, the representation of the fierce force and

virility of a country as well as that of a man (the artist who chose it).

This process of investiture with higher meaning of an otherwise common item, is

the same observed by pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott in his

analysis of the role of play in children. Inanimate objects are empowered with

special abilities to aid children in keeping off anxiety in particular stressful times.

The objects or toys provide comfort when the mother’s care is not available. The

chosen item becomes a trait d’union between the inner, subjective world of the

child and the outer, objective reality around him. In trying to control at least some of

the most painful aspects of reality, the object allows an imaginative leap that makes

the grief more bearable. The tools used to make sense of reality are defined by

Winnicott as “transitional” and sometimes as “transactional” objects.

In Creativity -Theory, History, Practice Rob Pope clarifies that they are transitional

in the sense that they allow change to take place and transactional because they

involve exchanges between oneself and others:

… over life such transitional/transactional objects might range from a corner of blanket clutched by an infant to making tea, from relishing a single word to sharing the practices of language and culture at large. (Pope, 2005, p. 55)

The blanket assumes a symbolic value in an infant’s life, but its factual attributes

are as important as its representative ones. If the infant is to reach autonomy away

from the mother, the fact that the blanket stands for the breast is equally important

to the child’s awareness that it is not the mother’s breast.

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In her The I and the not I (1977, pp. 36-57), M. E. Harding, describes what she

calls “participation mystique”: a projection of unconscious thoughts into the

surrounding environment (or people, objects, situations) as if they were attributes of

it, rather than reflections of one’s own psyche. Harding illustrates a practice in use

among certain aboriginal tribes in Australia, whereby each member of the

community posses a stone or piece of wood invested with curative attributes. The

sacred fetish or amulet, the churinga, is kept buried in a specific location whose

whereabouts is known only to its owner. In time of need the churinga is unearthed

to be rubbed and to benefit from its “good power” or mana. Once the mana passes

from the churinga to the man, the object is hidden again so that the earth can

restore its energy. This account reiterates the concept that the appropriation and

interpretation of things seen constitutes a metaphorical bridge between ourselves

and the world. Seeing and creativity are strictly connected and represents just an

aspect of this need. Both in the act of creativity and in the act of seeing, two

opposing forces seem to be at work: one that aims to obtain the most objective

examination of reality and one that inevitably tries to attributes certain arbitrary and

internal values.

One could conclude that the most important aspect of creativity in exercising a

critical function is the ability to project inner images onto outer ones and to

establish connections between apparently unrelated images or concepts. Drawing

from the archives of imagery that we store in our memory we determine new and

original meanings. This ability is not always conscious. Most of the times it is a

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reflex that originates a multitude of thought processes and theory formings. Those

able to recur to a richer spectrum of “percepts” have an insight of things perceived

that allows innovative outcomes to be imagined, freed from conventional readings.

As Laurie Scheider Adams notes in her The Methodologies of Art (1996, p. 201):

The significance of transitional objects and transitional phenomena … is their role as cultural basis for later creative pursuits. The transitional object becomes the paradigm of all art, which has a transitional aspect.

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4

Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp as precursor of Post-modern era

Chance, context, and the art coefficient in creativity

From the everyday to the ready-made

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Duchamp restored the intellectual dignity of the artist - the freedom to think and act in disregard of any authority principle (but rather by obeying to the pleasure principle). (Schwarz,1969, p.47)

… a truly revolutionary artist, whose epoch-making works and deeds between 1912 and 1923 turned all previous art forms and the world upside down. (Muller-Alsbach et al, 2002 p.6)

In a talk given in Huston in April 1957, Duchamp expressed his view on the creative

act, stating that the subjectivity of the artiste was not always consciously applied

and a gap is detectable between what is purposefully wished for and what is in fact

realized. In this divergence the act of viewing and perception become, for

Duchamp, crucial, and so did the role assigned to the spectator. The missing link

was what Duchamp defined the “art coefficient”: “an arithmetical relation between

unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed” (Muller-Alsbach et al,

2002, p. 43). Not always what is planned to be achieved is actually accomplished,

while fortuitous events might lead to original discoveries. It is the spectator’s role to

give completeness to the objet d’art, by deciphering and deconstructing its “inner

qualifications”, of which the creator cannot always be aware of.

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With this claim Duchamp was throwing light on the conceptual or philosophical

reasons behind the creation of what made him, years earlier, the father of post-

modernism and whose ready-mades constitute a land-mark in modern art.

If the perception of an object (chosen by art-critics or art-curators and on whose

selection the artist has little input or none) exhibited in a museum is validated, in its

artistic attribution, by its context, then the reverse might also be true: by choosing

an everyday object and exhibiting it in an art circuit, it becomes an objet-d’art. In a

quizzical game of opposites, it was by acting out the second assumption that

Duchamp aimed at disclaiming the first one. With this paradox, he wanted to draw

attention on the marginal role the artists played in the reception of their artifacts,

realizing the importance of context and modes of viewing in the discernment of art

and calling on artists and viewers to question the status-quo.

If the artist is credited with the mere role of medium to convey an intuitive creative

act, but no responsibility is assigned to him in explaining or judging the outcome of

that act, who is accountable for the reading of the artist’s labour? The spectator will

facilitate this deciphering, explains Duchamp, as well as accepting those artist’s

choices that make of him a more active player than just a medium. In a painting,

the simple choice of colour expresses an act of will, although some parts of the

work of art, like the canvas for instance, might constitute its ready-made attributes.

All formal aspects will give rise to a theoretical resonance in the viewer, who will

endow with comprehensiveness the work of art, by way of interpreting and

attributing meaning to its attributes.

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Mirroring this principle in the assignment of significance, Duchamp infers that

selecting an object by chance is still a reflection of a preference or desire, since, by

merely choosing it, regardless of aesthetic qualities, the artist leaves “his

signature”. In this way, chance becomes for Duchamp another determinant factor

in the creation and perception of art as it allows for true freedom from aesthetical

constrictions and avoids perceptual routine.

Chance and context - how an object (or painting) is chosen, where it is shown and

how it relates to its observer, the space and other objects surrounding it - were the

two main innovative features through which Duchamp articulated his position.

Duchamp’s views were expressed through a very subversive and humorous act

carried out on April 1917, for the exhibition organized in New York by the Society of

Independent Artists. A director of the society, he anonymously submitted a

“sculpture” which turned out to be a mass-produced urinal, sat on its back on a

pedestal. It was called Fountain (fig. 5) and signed by a certain R. Mutt, who, of

course, did not exist. Fountain was rejected and only came to view through a

photo in Dada’s review The Blind man of May 1917.

The outcry that followed was understandable: art was changed for ever and with a

single act of mischief.

In June 1967, in an interview with Phillippe Collin (Muller-Alsbach, et al, 2002 p.37),

Duchamp expressed his views on what he considered to be a wide-spread attitude:

to be visually seduced by a sterile abstract art that carried no meaningful

messages, despite being highly praised by critics. Fountain preceded and

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anticipated this stand: it was both a witty joke and a solemn gesture of protest

against an art-world that Duchamp thought not engaged in a constructive debate

about artistic practice. This was a Joker’s way of - quite literally - “taking the piss”

and disclaiming “the emperors new cloths”.

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Fig. 5

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, porcelain urinal

It would be wrong to neglect the element of the huge practical joke in ‘Fountain’ and its general air of disconcertingly ridiculing the art world as well as, with complete seriousness, reconfigurating everything it thought it believed about art. (Hensher, 2008)

To endow a ready-made with transcendental attributes, albeit enigmatic, was a

very dexterous act that allowed Duchamp to postulate his critical position, without

clearly stating so. Viewers, after all, would have to make out its meaning,

accordingly to personal preferences. Still today art critic Philip Hensher (2008)

speculates on the beauty of the object despite beauty was, of the possible raison

d'être for the Fountain, the less wished for by Duchamp. Hensher evokes its

resemblance with the Virgin Mary, drawing a parallel between the outlines of the

pissoir and the veil embracing the holy figure.

Acknowledging Duchamp’s fondness for multiple readings, the art critic also sees in

it also a sum of the artist’s penchant for “sexual difference”, a receptacle with

womb-like attributes yet a phallic symbol in a priapic figurine. And what to make of

its signature? As the piece was chosen from the J.L. Mott Iron Works in New York,

it is easy to pick up on the phonetically assonance between Mott, the manufacturer,

to Mutt, the pseudonym chosen to sign the piece. It was also a conceptual

assonance/dissonance: if Mott created the urinals through a process of mass

production, Mutt created it through an act of choice.

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Fig. 6

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1964, replica, assemblage

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In an interview with Swartz (1997, vol. 2, p. 588) Duchamp reveals how the concept

of ready-made was first conceived. In 1913, he had the idea to fasten a bicycle

wheel to a kitchen stool, to watch it turn. What later become to be know as The

Bicycle Wheel (fig. 6), was thus created - by chance - in his studio. It was simply

an object that the artist had enjoyed watching as the turning of the wheel had a

soothing effect on him, comparable to the comforting effect provoked by “the

flames dancing in a fireplace” (Swartz,1997, p.588). The wheel almost offered itself

up to Duchamp, whom chose it only on the basis of the pleasure it provoked in him.

It is through it, though, that Duchamp “created conceptual art and severed forever

the traditional link between the artist’s labour and the merit of the work” (Hensher,

2008), expressing his profound adversity for an art that he reckoned to be merely

“retinal” or “visual” (Muller-Alsbach, et al, 2002 p.37). Proposing to stimulate the

most intellectual aspects of a viewer’s comprehension, Duchamp invested a

mundane object, firstly chosen on instinctual grounds, with symbolic, transitional

attributes that were the sum of much more complex and sophisticated concepts.

Accordingly to Margaret Iversen (2004, p. 9):

the modernist tradition of disinterested art displaced subjectivity in favour of the medium; the effect of Duchamp's (postmodern?) intervention was to expand the idea of medium to include the whole institution of art.

The effect of the ready-made was to de-subjectivise art by continuously testing and

negating the limits of what is regarded as art. This attitude is at the base of every

contemporary art practice. In the analysis of Octavio Paz (1970, pp. 12-13) the

ready-mades are not anti-art, but an-artistic in the sense that their intention is more

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critical or philosophical rather than plastic. They are “active criticism” because they

question the meanings of taste first and of work of art in the second place.

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5

Sigmar Polke

Polke as heir of Duchamp: playfulness as a way to see differently

Chance as alchemy

Mass-reproduction technique against the originality of the artist

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… we are taking part in the uncertain game of perception. Painting makes truths easier for us by clothing them in “transparent” lies. It uses lies which can express truths. By exposing lies it reveals the truth of painting. (Belting, et al, 1997, p. 129)

Often combining abstract with representational motifs, painter and photographer

Sigmar Polke defies any static classification. The only ‘leith-motif’ in this incessantly

innovative artist is his playfulness which allows for disparate means and processes

to co-exist, without any formal or conceptual preoccupation or limitation. If we want

to detect a recurring theme, we could say that the work transpires with ideas of

looking and perceiving. Images from the mass-media are often used as tools to

investigate the very act of seeing; blown-up photographs extracted from newspapers

become objects to inspect how we differentiate between abstraction and figuration

and therefore how we come to attribute meaning to the world around us. Polke

juxtaposes chance - as a way of questioning or “denying the authorial subjectivity of

the artist”, embracing Pop Art’s refusal of traditional painting (Belting, et al, 1997, p.

44) - to processes that employ a rigorous, methodical approach. Unlike Warhol,

though, who questioned the uniqueness of the painting by serialising the same

image, Polke embeds each work with originality, both celebrating and ridiculing the

trivial, offering an ambivalent insight into it and showing us his ironic distance from

it.

Sometimes, chance-based techniques are employed alongside printing modes

that illustrate representational motifs. Other times, limit-less experimentation

seems to be the subject matter of Polke’s investigations. A third “methodology”

sees Polke reproducing a print in its most recognisable features, through “dots”

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painstakingly applied by hand, where mistakes and splodges become a way of

contrasting organization and neatness. In these sense Polke’s creative urge

seems to be an act of “ritualisation” of his own need to grasp the world. In his

appropriation of popular imagery, Polke reinforces his use of the creative act as a

way to make order out of chaos, in the same way gregarious primitive and pagan

celebrations envisage a better perception of the external world an thus a way of

controlling at least some aspects of it.

In the raster paintings, newspapers provide inspiration for both subject matter and

means of production: the half-tone “dot” technique proper of broadsheet

and tabloid illustration is borrowed to render overblown images appropriated by

the press. The distorted scale provokes a disquieting oscillation between what is

visible and what is recognisable. In Rasterzeichnung (fig.7), by de-constructing

the printed image, supposed to represent a most objective view on reality, and by

re-construing it through the use of paint, supposed to be a means of fiction - if not

of deception - Polke exchanges the modes of objectivity and subjectivity. By

putting the viewers in a field of ambiguity and uncertainty, he reminds them that

both the coding and de-coding of the image are mediated events. The viewer is

invited to take a closer look at how printed images are created, to then discover

the fictional nature of the process.

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Fig. 7

Sigmar Polke, Raster Drawing (Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald),1963, poster paint on paper

Through the “Ben-day dots” commercial printing process (fig. 8), Polke overlaps

the means of information to those of advertising. “True” facts are either illustrated

along commercials or through techniques employed in publicity. The “truth” of the

news is narrated against what is commonly perceived as an inflated or

embellished version of reality, if not an altogether deceitful one. Polke does not

seem to take any particular stand with regard to what is true or false, it is the

context chosen by the artist that suggests a “horizontal” alignment between

images, where no hierarchy is established.

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Fig. 8

Sigmar Polke, Bunnies, 1966Synthetic polymer on linen 58 3/4 x 39 1/8 in.

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…I like the way that dots in a magnified picture swim ad move about. The way that motifs change from recognisable to unrecognisable, the undecided, ambiguous nature of the situation, the way it remains open […] Lots of dots vibrating, resonating, blurring, re-emerging, thoughts of radio signals, radio pictures and television come to mind. (Belting, et al, 1997, p. 54)

By supposedly getting nearer to the source from where our understanding of the

outside world initiates, we realise how the divulgation of a given discourse, or

truth, is actualised through an act of fiction. In analysing the “modus operandi” of

the artist, not only do we reflect on Polke’s creative force - which is at once the

manifested subject of his art as well as that of our scrutiny - but, as Martin

Hentschel reveals by quoting Vilem Flusser, we also reflect on that “discourse

recoded as symbolic facts” (Belting, et al, 1997, p. 54). This, in turn, makes us

ponder over the critical role of the artist in refusing to accept an interpretation of

reality as if it was reality itself; or at least to offer alternative views to those

universally accepted.

If Duchamp used chance to defy any aesthetic categorization, Polke’s use of

chance - as a magical event - draws attention to the alchemical nature of painting.

The transformative nature of creativity is sought after and the legacy to what “the

Surrealists called “objective chance” (Belting, et al. 1997, p. 57) is evident. The

hasard objectif, as defined by André Breton, represents what coincidences can

reveal to the artists in their search for meaning. In a world where everything is

seen as connected, there is no hierarchy. No place for distinction between

beautiful and ugly, truths and lies, high and low culture. The “carnival grotesque”

celebrated by Dada and taken on by Fluxsus takes a new stance in Polke’s art.

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… [the carnival-grotesque] consecrates inventive freedom to permit the combination of a variety of different elements and their rapprochement, to liberate form from the prevailing view of the world, from conventions and established truths, from clichés, from all that is humdrum and universally accepted. This carnival spirit offers the chance to have a new outlook on the world, to realise the relative nature of all that exist, and to enter a completely new order of things. (Belting, et al, 1997, p. 58)

Polke poses himself as an actor/spectator of a “methectic participation” (Storr

1976, p. 176) where the performer participates in a natural phenomenon in a way

to actually feel as he/she has initiated it. Of course Polke facilitates the collision

between certain minerals, resins and pigments within the specific “territory” of the

“canvas”, but the very way this encounter is actualised is in itself a replica of

natural phenomena on which men (and women) have little influence or impact.

Polke’s understanding of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle - that the mere act

of looking can provoke a change in the object of our gaze – could be at the

base of his investigations. The artist becomes, through his explorations, an

alchemist that can alter the course of history by simply looking at it. “For me

the image isn't important, it's the human behavior of wanting to touch it that is”

(Vogel, 2007). With this statement Polke makes his position clear: even when

imagery is borrowed from newspapers narrating political or social events, it

seems to be employed as a mere prompt for investigations on the very

ontological nature of seeing.

In the six paintings presented for the “Venice Biennale 2007”, we detect formal

and conceptual allegories that have resonances in the act of viewing. The

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dimensions of the paintings (fig. 12) resemble both cinema screens and

billboards, while the see-through polyester fabric, employed as canvas, is

equally evocative of screen-printing’s mesh and of a curtain veiled over a

gigantic window.

Fig. 12

Sigmar Polke, The Axis of Time, 2007 mixed media on polyester fabric (10 x 16 ft)

The visible structure of the stretcher, a signifier in itself, poses as a physical

bearer of a hidden dimension and of a receding field of vision constantly

requiring our eyes to re-adjust and re-assess our judgment.

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The reflective surface of the “canvas” adds new elements in the composition as

beams, lights and grids are juxtaposed to the existing scenery, enriching the

perception and making it an extraordinary sensorial experience.

Fig. 13

Sigmar Polke, The Axis of Time, 2007mixed media on polyester fabric (10 x 16 ft)

The reflections are not only very difficult to discern from what is actually on the

fabric, but, by virtue of their instable nature, they create an illusion of

movement that adds a three-dimensionality rarely experienced in non-optical

painting. Crouching down, pulling ourselves up, aiming our gaze upwards and

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downwards, left to right, peeking in from the side, we lose our sense of self to

discover the “non-corporality” of Polke’s paintings.

Fig. 14

Sigmar Polke, The Axis of Time, 2007mixed media on polyester fabric (10 x 16 ft)

The figures represented in three of the six paintings are all engaged in the act

of looking. Children (fig. 13) lean over an edge to admire an unidentified object

or landscape (unless the object of their scrutiny is the painting itself); adults

(fig. 14-15) point at what can only be outside our field of vision. By removing

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the subject of their gaze, the painter seems to want us to intensify our own

ability to observe and ponder, making our looking the protagonist of its work.

Fig. 15

Sigmar Polke, The Axis of Time, 2007mixed media on polyester fabric (10 x 16 ft)

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What Polke offers is a complex experience that gathers multiple modes of

seeing: seeing “what is behind” an image (the stretcher), what forms an image

(the painted surface), and what is projected over an image (the physical objects

reflected on the surface of the fabric and finally those “projected” onto it by our

sensitivity and imagination). The critical attitude that Polke shows towards

everything that aims to reflect the world through imagery, is thus provoked in

the viewer who is encouraged to contemplate what it is that he/she is seeing

and how the experience takes place.

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Conclusion

We have seen how, behind any creative act, stands the ability to invest objects

and/or images with transitional attributes. In this resides also the aptitude to

attribute meaning to objects and images that come to incarnate wider concepts. In

this way objects and images become symbols for ideas and theories.

Choosing an object whose intrinsic attributes are reminiscent of others, reveals an

associative talent that is at the basis of language as well as creativity. Signs

(words): the signifiers (speech) and signified (mental concepts) are to be find in

verbal and written communication - and in culture at large - as well as in the realm

of the visual.

As seeing is equated with knowledge, information is carried through images.

In a culture dominated by “visuality”, any hegemonic discourse is predominately

carried out through the imagery of the mass media. Relying on the ability of

recurring to a wider spectrum of associations that is typical of any “creative,

transitional seeing” (Adams, 1996, p.206), the artist makes use of a critical

“viewing” that does not conform to traditions and main-stream canons, thus

challenging the status-quo.

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Marcel Duchamp, sceptical of the institutionalization of artistic practice, questioned

the authority of those entities that determined the perception and reception of the

work of art. The object was raised to the status of icon, symbolic representation of

the crisis he envisaged in painting. The ready-made became with Duchamp a

statement of the inter-relation of art and life as well as a signifier for the relativity of

our belief-systems.

Sigmar Polke paradoxically poses himself as the moral heir of Duchamp. Focusing

on imagery borrowed from newspaper and advertising, Polke gives new

significance to the role of the artist within our post-modern society; a probing

subject that detects and dissects the hegemonic discourse, opposing to it a less

addicted perceptual experience that establishes the act of looking as a critical tool

enacted through creativity.

(7, 688)

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