Readymades were the shock of modernity. As part of the exhibition “Form Matters, Matter Forms”, the Kunst Museum Winterthur is showing readymades from 1964 to the present day. Everyday objects that are perceived and evaluated as art in a changed environment.
With the invention of the Readymade Marcel Duchamp in the 1910s was the first time that everyday objects were provocatively declared to be art. In the context of Pop Art in the 1960s, the influence of product and advertising design on art increased. The Winterthur exhibition Form Matters, Matter Forms shows how art moves in its mutual relationship with consumer society, mass media and popular culture up to the present day.
Marcel Duchamp, “The Suitcase Box”, 1941/1963. Duchamp’s box is a kind of catalogue raisonné in miniature form, which shows his development from classical painting to his conceptual understanding of art in the readymades.
The French-American artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) began with traditional and avant-garde painting until he found it superfluous in the face of photography and cinema. In 1914 he presented a bottle holder, “Bottle rack”not an object created by the artist, but one chosen by him for use. A worthless object without any aesthetic appeal, which was not initially intended for sale.
Multiple of Marcel Duchamp’s «Porte-bouteilles» (Bottle Rack) from 1914 (Wikimedia) and appropriation of Elaine Sturtevant, «Duchamp fountain», 1973.
In 1917, Duchamp bought a urinal in a sanitary ware store and titled it Fountain and signed it with the pseudonym «R. Mutt». He wanted to exhibit this object in New York. But it was rejected and thus became a media event. Today it is known that Fountain was probably a work by his girlfriend, the Dada artist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. This certainly plays a role in the exhibition context. Because the effect is different when it is known that this male-connoted object was created by a female artist. But the “original” work is lost anyway and only survives thanks to a photograph by Alfred Stieglitz from 1917.
Richard Hamilton, «Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different?», 1994, color laser print. Hamilton’s 1956 collages made from images from American magazines were reproduced again and again and laid the foundation for Pop Art.
Duchamp presented his initially already made mentioned objects only from the 1940s onwards. Since some were lost, he had them Multiple With his signature and title, these became art objects, Readymadewhich found its way into museums and galleries and could be sold profitably. Duchamp recognized that the greatly changed reality of life in the 1960s meant that the time had come to distance himself from the traditional understanding of art. And with the advent of Pop Art, his work gained recognition.
Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Brillo Soap Pads (Pasadena Type), 1964-1969, Acrylic and silkscreen on wood. Photo: KMW, 2024 ProLitteris
From 1964, Andy Warhol introduced the Brillo boxes the Post-Readymade The Pop Art artists of the early 1960s differ from the avant-garde artists of the 1910s through the advent of mass production of affordable consumer goods that changed life. Consumer goods were now ubiquitous. In supermarkets, they were stacked and packaged to save space, and packaging design was used as an advertising medium. The new aesthetics penetrated the visual arts via consumption and changed them in terms of form and content. Artistic originality lost its authority.
John M. Armleder (*1948 Geneva), «Don’t do it», 1997-2021. A series of emblematic readymade objects by other artists.
The development of the Readymades also included the The appropriationthe appropriation of works by other artists. Early on, Elaine Sturtevant (1924-2014) appropriated works by her male colleagues who had dominated the New York art scene since the 1940s, such as in 1973 Duchamps Fountain. She also reproduced Andy Warhol’s series Flower Paintings immediately after they were made. Warhol had no objection.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, «Untitled» (Welcome Back Heroes), 1991. 35’000 Bazooka chewing gum laid out on the ground reminds us of our childhood. But “Bazooka” also refers to the weapon of the same name used by the US armed forces.
The criticism of capitalism also began in the arts in the 1970s. With the White Cubes established galleries in New York, an exhibition and sales platform that also became a style-setting factor for boutiques and luxury stores. And under the influence of the economic crises and the Iraq war, the tone became more severe. For example, Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996) refers in his work Untitled» (Welcome Back Heroes) conceptually multi-layered on the human tragedies caused by war. He lays a carpet on the floor with 35,000 Bazooka chewing gums and asks the audience to take a piece of gum with them. The pleasant childhood memories are in the foreground. But the bazooka is also a deadly weapon of the US armed forces, invented in 1942 and used since the Second World War.
Sylvie Fleury, (Gold) Fountain Truck, 2003, Glazed porcelain. Photo: KMW
Silvie Fleury questions the male-dominated art world with her seemingly harmless works. She transforms clear attributes of masculinity into glamorous objects and thus gives them an ambivalence. In her work (Gold) Fountain LKW she transforms a truck tire into a golden fountain and is reminiscent of Duchamp’s Fountain of 1917. Fleury was inspired by her Shopping Bags In these, she shifts the context of fashion and luxury goods and illustrates the absurdity of consumer and commodity fetishism.
Photos: rv and Kunst Museum Winterthur
Until 17 November 2024
«Form Matters, Matter Forms. From Readymade to Commodity Fetish». In the Kunst Museum Winterthur / At the Stadthaus
