Jerry Saltz, a senior art critic for New York Magazine, makes a strong connection between Duchamp and Immanuel Kant’s theory of the sublime in art. Writing in the Village Voice, Saltz says:
“Fountain brings us into contact with an original that is still an original but that also exists in an altered philosophical and metaphysical state. It is a manifestation of the Kantian sublime: A work of art that transcends a form but that is also intelligible, an object that strikes down an idea while allowing it to spring up stronger. Its presence is grace.”
Thus, a hard question in art history is explaining how Kantian philosophy leads to an art sub-culture that celebrates men’s urinals being displayed in places of honor. Here is my explanation, in this conversation with Norwegian artist and critic Jan-Ove Tuv about that very topic:
Related: My lecture at ESEADE University, Argentina, on the intellectual origins of modernist and postmodernist art worlds:
Hello Mr. Hicks
It is modernism, in my opinion, that leads to post-modernism. Modernism (and medieval pre-modernism) leads to the idea that each individual is unique. So to the idea that each individual has a relationship to the world, to reality that is specific to him, that is unlike any other. Science reveals this. No individual is the same, nor thinks the same. So we can arrive at the idea that there are as many possible interpretations of the world as there are individuals. No brain works in the same way. Add to that the fall of the power of the church, it is the open door to all expressions, all sects, all interpretations. Also in art. It is a process that is ultimately totally natural, if in addition you arrive at a total democratization in creation: everyone can make art.
I do not see the problem Mr. Hicks.
In all this mess of contemporary creation there are very beautiful things.
In experimental art there are very interesting things (experimental because there are new tools: camera, recorder, video camera…).
Experimental art that has been plundered by so-called popular art: you will find in fashion photography, in popular films, in music videos, in popular music, in interior design, in architecture, in literature as well, a whole bunch of ideas developed by so-called experimental art, which is a well of ideas, ugly or not. Without this experimental art being cited… It is ungrateful and unfair in my opinion.
Duchamp’s urinal is funny just as a provocation. The problem* is, as I wrote to you, that it has become a school… and Duchamp knew that it could destroy the “artistic profession”.
No, Art has not become ugly. There are ugly things in Art.
Best!
Nicolas
*But is this really a problem?