Jim Andrews
Since the beginning
Works in Victoria Canada

ARTBASE (2)
BIO
Jim Andrews does http://vispo.com . He is a poet-programmer and audio guy. His work explores the new media possibilities of poetry, and seeks to synthesize the poetical with other arts and media.
Discussions (847) Opportunities (2) Events (14) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Re: MTAA-RR [ news/twhid/duchamp_s_fountain_most_influential.html ]


> i agree, jim, but this seems subtly a different point. change is
> fine, even radical change, non-sense shifts and surprise directions.
> but this happened long before we were born. this has been the status
> quou for years now.

i like that. "the status quou".

> though the US also has a rich history, like
> writing in Britain, as you said.

i didn't say that the US also has a rich history like writing in Britain,
actually. English literature goes back at least to Chaucer in the fourteenth
century (1300's). USAmerican literature goes back to Lawrence Sterne and his
Tristam Shandy back in the eighteenth century (1700's). of course the two
histories are intimately related (though separate), once USAmerican
literature gets under way. and i admire both.

> but assuming you are under 50, for
> most of our art experience, we rarely actually see old-style art
> accept treated as a historical artifact.

Really? I think we even see stuff from the sixties or seventies or even
eighties treated as historical artifact, never mind stuff from duchamp's
time.

> if there was any reason to say "hey, why not x as art!" alone, that
> would be fine. i don't mean to harp on conceptualism here. it's
> the urinal thing that has me baffled..
>
>
> it's one thing that the word "nigger" was an insult that has since
> been turned around. friends call their black friends nigger and
> everyone's fine with it.

the word is still loaded regardless of who uses it, whether it's fired at
someone or as a warning shot around the feet.

> if you tried using the word as an insult
> today in ny, everyone would think you must be a nut case. same with
> "fag" and so many old derogatory words turned positive. and that's a
> cool shift.

reclaiming language does not result in the dissassembly of all the guns.
it's more like the gun is used as a lamp, or something to spray cleaner
fluid, or a swiffer handle etc., but some of them are still used as assault
weapons. whether it fires bullets is a matter of what the intended victim
sees in the gun: assault weapon or swiffer handle. but lots of people still
try to use them as weapons, and lots of people still perceive them as
weapons.

but what this has to do with marcel duchamp is beyond me.

> but the question: are you so disconnected from planet earth that
> you'd think of a reason to covet a urinal? is not name calling. the
> event may have been a major milestone in the most radical change in
> hundreds of years,

i wouldn't go that far.

> but hardly the first. painting on grecian vases,
> how they thought of it then versus how we do now, seems like a much
> more important shift, albeit more gradual and far less familiar.

i have no idea.

> it
> may have been re-thought 100 times before history books arrived at a
> positive interpretation. but now it's an old standard. the original
> blurb posted attests to the fact that most agree on the urinals
> significance in art history.
>
> we can laugh at it, then move on to more constructive tasks, rather
> than continue to wallow in what it (rather aptly) criticizes.

what it criticizes has not gone away, plasma. nor will it. art is dead and
has been for a long time. now it's the unholy ghost. it's a ghost of what it
was. it's the ghost in the machine. that we can't do without.

ja

DISCUSSION

Re: short movie (re-edited)


> 'Tale of Crow' (re-edited)
> duration: 4 min.
> frame rate: 12.5 fps
> speaks Hebrew with English subtitles

DISCUSSION

Re: MTAA-RR [ news/twhid/duchamp_s_fountain_most_influential.html ]


journalism from salon.com on a poll commissioned by the sponsor of the
Turner prize of art 'experts' on 'the most influential' artists.

inquiring minds want to know, obviously.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: MTAA-RR [ news/twhid/duchamp_s_fountain_most_influential.html ]


It may be important to point out that the most influential art world is
between one's own ears.
ja

DISCUSSION

Re: MTAA-RR [ news/twhid/duchamp_s_fountain_most_influential.html ]


> duchamp didn't make the urinal, no creativity in
> assembling the ingredients of an object was involved. so there is no
> excuse to call it art. it's just a clever joke.

i was thinking about this discussion in relation to discussion on another
list, a poetry list from britain. of course britain has a long and
distinguished history concerning poetry, which i admire greatly. but it is
not without difficulties for contemporary british writers. the weight of
that history and achievement has tended, for most of the twentieth century
and in our time, to make the culture perhaps too resistant to radical change
in poetry. the brits are lively and innovative in many arts, but their
poetry is weighted down by the strength of their past achievements. even if
the writers themselves get out from under it, the culture is resistant to
radical change in poetry.

part of what the acceptance of duchamp's work is about is an acceptance of
radical change in visual art. and that is admirable. healthy. progressive.

similarly radical changes in poetry are greeted with different measures of
acceptance in different cultures. brazil and argentina, for instance, tend
to be strongly innovative and embrace radical change in the literary arts.
britain not so. the usa and canada, well, middle ground.

ja