greg.org: the making of: Chip Of Fools
Greg Allen points out that Washington Post critic Blake Gopnik made a mistake. I’m not sure how Gopnik came to believe the Duchamp urinals displayed in museums are all “visibly handcrafted replacements” but perhaps the more important point not mentioned comes from a 1961 lecture “A point which I want very much to establish that the choice of these “readymades” was never dictated by esthetic delectation. This choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste…in fact a total anesthesia” Surely Eva and Franco Mattes’ chip does a better job than even Duchamp with achieving that goal. Notably, having just spent a bunch of time in the Duchamp room in Philadelphia, it’s almost impossible to believe Duchamp used “total anesthesia” as an object selection criteria. If he did, he failed anyway.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if the event in which Fountain is embedded, the alleged rejection and unmasking of the avant-garde democratic claims of the SIA, never took place. Like everything else Duchamp staged, The case of R Mutt or Buddha in the Bathroom exists mainly as the alleged photo by Steiglitz. Yet no one has the negative and RShearer has pointed out how the well reproduced photo is a composite so that the actual object urinal does not match up with any urinal catalogue pieces from the period. So, the actual original mass produced object might be a fiction, which renders arguing over the Fountain’s authenticity quite interesting. The man was a competent painter at best, he never could paint, in my opinion, but his staging is still light years ahead of everbody.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the event in which Fountain is embedded, the alleged rejection and unmasking of the avant-garde democratic claims of the SIA, never took place. Like everything else Duchamp staged, The case of R Mutt or Buddha in the Bathroom exists mainly as the alleged photo by Steiglitz. Yet no one has the negative and RShearer has pointed out how the well reproduced photo is a composite so that the actual object urinal does not match up with any urinal catalogue pieces from the period. So, the actual original mass produced object might be a fiction, which renders arguing over the Fountain’s authenticity quite interesting. The man was a competent painter at best, he never could paint, in my opinion, but his staging is still light years ahead of everbody.
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