"Are they the readymade?"
Date: April, 2016
Medium: Photography/ Installation of separated sheet on the floor.
By Nikko Pham
“Readymades”, a new definition brought by Marcel Duchamp, who was one of the pioneers in Dada – a movement that raised up a question about what art should be and how it should be made, when he presented objects themselves as art in the gallery. He argued, “An ordinary object [could be] elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist” (MoMA Learning).
In the project “Share and Share Alike”, I have got some experiences of how to make good art and install them. Moreover, through the study, I have learnt how to expand and develop further “the gifts” from my partner, which were the starting idea and the physical object. My partner for the first project of my second year at the university was Gordon Darling and he exchanged me a coat hanger, going together with a quote to reflect his idea:
“A hanger:
Once the readymade is not in a question,
There is no longer the readymade.
So be it.”
To understand that sentence, I twisted it into the reverse way:
“Once the readmade is in question.
There is the readymade.”
It was easier for me to understand the meaning. I realised that whatever I did with this readymade in the artwork, the viewers would question about its characteristics in the art environment. Therefore, I decided to focus on my given object’s form and functions. I tried to bend it into something else to see whether any new ideas came up. Then I recognised we could see things through “the lens of the coat hanger”. It was like a new interesting idea of looking at the world through different perspectives.
To expand my idea and go for the hunt and experience of new materials, I played around with different paper rolls or carton boxes, which we could also see through. Moreover, I used photography to collect the images of texture or patterns through these objects to make them look ambiguous to the viewers, so that artwork connects back to the question of the starting point: “What are these things? Are they the readymade?”.
Additionally, I expanded the other idea in relation to my given object: people were also the “coat hangers”. We were hanging our clothes, which illustrated our different identities. We might look similar, but we were not copies of each other. The idea reflected in Part 2 of the project.
Works through "Rectangular lens"
Works through "Circular lens"
Reference:
MoMA Learning. “Marcel Duchamp and the Readymade”. MoMA Learning, Sponsor of the site by Target, n.d., https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/dada/marcel-duchamp-and-the-readymade/
