Comments on: Claes Oldenburg

By: Supper

Supper — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:58:45 +0000

Yeah I know he could have chopped down the “Tree of Knowledge” cooked up a little barbeque snake and apples hmmm tasty.

that would have done it

By: Idol

Idol — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:55:47 +0000

Re : 15

Would you Adam and Eve it that God got it wrong when he said “Don’t Eat The Fruit” its obvious if you say “Don’t” they will he should have said “Don’t Eat the Snake”

…things might have turned out different

By: calder brian

calder brian — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 22:49:14 +0000

has anyone seen a Oldenburg IceBurg?

By: Jesus

Jesus — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 23:26:20 +0000

P.s meet me at the tree on fire need to speak asap

By: Jesus

Jesus — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 23:24:35 +0000

Your peg is so good i decided to make my own version at home i got a peg and a magnifiy glass, it was brilliant.

By: John Ryskamp

John Ryskamp — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 22:54:41 +0000

I saw an Oldenburg the other day. It was sitting on its ass in a museum.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 18:22:26 +0000

Interesting.

On reflection, given the title of his series,I’m now minded to think it was an extremely partial and one-sided perspective on the power - and the world - of art. I wonder why he didn’t try to explore some of the art of other cultures?

I’m finding myself more and more drawn to the great artists within Japanese art as I begin to understand the sort of impact they’ve had on other artists I admire and artistic ‘traditions’ generally.

By: Charley Parker

Charley Parker — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 02:22:43 +0000

First of all, thanks for the lively discussion. I kind of wish I had given this post a more general topic.

It’s certainly true that Duchamp isn’t the painter that Picasso was; but if you want a painter, I wouldn’t send you to Picasso anyway, he was another idea man (though you don’t need any theoretical background to “get’ Guernica).

If, on the other hand, you want someone to deconstruct the traditions of Western Art, I couldn’t recommend anyone better than Duchamp.

I think one of the reasons he is downplayed and only begrudgingly respected by the entrenched modernist establishment that has been rewriting art history for the past 70 years, is that he is a major embarrassment. He covered most of the ground they laid claim to, did it better, and did it 30-50 years ahead of them.

In addition to his forays into cubism (admittedly following Braque and Picasso), he pioneered, in one form or another, the foundations of most of what postwar modernism would lay claim to: found art, op art, pop art, minimalism, abstraction, conceptual art, happenings (performance art), drip painting, accidental art, and, of course, the deconstruction of artistic forms and traditions that he was credited for as the major force in Dada and one of the mentors of Surrealism.

He broke the canvas up not only in space, but in time (as his nude descended her staircase over multiple moments in a single image). If Duchamp is margarine, I can’t believe it’s not butter.

You also don’t need a theory to know, when faced with R. Mutt’s urinal or the mustachioed reproduction of the Mona Lisa, that Duchamp is either questioning the very definition of art, or pulling your leg. (Actually, of course, it’s both; which is one of the other things the oh-so-serious postwar modernists didn’t like about Duchamp or Dada, they did it with humor. Unforgivable!)

Yes, Rothko geve us his emotional response to color as color, even color as emotion, but would the course of art history have been all that different if he had not? I submit that it wouldn’t have. Wheras, without Duchamp, the subsequent 80 years or so would have been markedly different (better or worse, who knows? but different).

Modernism tore down the edifice of Western art and exposed its haunted skeleton, and Duchamp was the one who stripped it bare, like… well, like The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.

By: Travis

Travis — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 01:33:04 +0000

I’m not an expert on Marcel Duchamp. I am however very experienced with urinals. I’ve seen, and indeed needed, so many of them throughout my life, all different kinds, sizes and shapes. There’s no reason why any of them couldn’t fit into an artistic context. And so, I take it a little personally when my porcelain saviors are used for deceptive ends.
What Duchamp seems to have been doing was to debase the appearance of art, possibly for showmanship. Jose’s post describes it very well in butter and margerine. Still, art does need to be jogged from time to time. So many of the 19th century painters had become so literal with their subjects and handling of the material, that much of the ‘art’ became predictable, plastic and contrived. But why would any rebel artist choose to produce works that purposely bypass art itself? If they were so concerned that their predecessors failed the arts, why would the new generation do the same by abandoning it? I still maintain that’s not the position of an artist, but of a philosopher. Charley, I wouldn’t have minded had Schama crowned his series with Duchamp, since he was a very interesting man. But his choice of Rothko wrapped up the documentary’s point as no other artist could. I wish I’d written down the words Schama used for the conclusion. I can only summon some approximation in my memory. But I was impressed with the idea that truly, Rothko was unique in his time. Duchamp’s work is visual, even Pollack’s successful flight from object remains visual and textured. But Rothko paints without anchor. Perhaps he looked into the sky one day, on a cloudless day, lying on his back. Nothing but blue. Blue layered into blue… then he might have noticed a little red, then brown, yellow and purple. Maybe Rothko was painting what each of us already knows on a lazy picnic day. He just took it fathoms farther… with paint.
Charley, there are a lot of points that I agree with you, such as > Bravo. But you conclude the paragraph with Rothko portrayed as a slave to theory. Yes, he begins with theory, but is his work really a product only of that? To what degree is Rothko’s legacy colored by the snobbish opinions of certain critics from his time? Let me just add another thought. You said that the title could have been a better fit with “The Power of Art Theory”. One of the reasons I gravitated so much to this segment in particular is that Rothko seemed to share the effect of color as something that belongs to all of us. I didn’t see it as being theoretical, but rather open and simple. No doubt he had to work hard to develop his ideas, his end product was not to confuse, but to communicate. Simplicity is no small order. If he were in self denial about the presence of some art theory and his colorist tendencies… perhaps it was out of fear that people might misinterpret and overanalyze the human message he felt deeply within himself. His supportive critics may have done him more harm than good.

By: Jose

Jose — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 17:36:44 +0000

“Had Schama chosen, say, Marcel Duchamp, to represent “the power of art” in a modernist context, I would have been much less surprised (and much more interested).”

eek, *faints*

Duchamp’s inability to paint like picasso caused him to pursue his clever version of modernism. In that sense his work is analogous to painting in the same way margarine is analogous to butter.

I am sure he would rather have been remembered as a great painter than for that urinal or other minutia. At the end he gave it up to just play chess.

But, I do understand where you are coming from. Surrealism/Duchamp/Pop - decontextualizing the ordinary and banal into something more interesting. Duchamp’s influence on american conceptualism: Hesse, Smithson was good. The italian arte povera movement was also pretty good.