John James Marshall thesis.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

“…a redefinition of Aristotelian logic to include a “law of included
middle”, instead of a law of excluded middle, and a recognition of
complexity as a fundamental feature of knowledge.” (Janz, 1998)
From a theoretical perspective the binary point of view of either ‘art’ or ‘design’
is oversimplified. It is contingent upon constructing in our minds a switch with
‘art’ at one pole and ‘design’ at the other. Even from an art historical point of
view this uncomplicated state has been undermined (at least) since 1917 34 . This
was when Marcel Duchamp resigned as Director of the Society of Independent
Artists after a dispute with the Board over whether a ‘ready made’, massproduced
object (a urinal) titled ‘Fountain’ (Figure 20, right) and signed ‘R.
Mutt’ by Duchamp was art, or not. Abbate (2004) has stated that Conceptual
Art represents a concerted effort to eliminate ‘the aesthetic’ as a meaningful
category in art. He asserts that Marcel Duchamp laid the foundation for this by
splitting apart the artwork into its ideational and material components. The
readymade presents us with a generic thing, isolated as a conceptual framework
from its materially specific component (Abbate, 2004). In Heideggarian terms
(Heidegger, 1976, p.33) this is an ‘equipmental’ thing, an object whose meaning
is completely exhausted in the relation of its form to its use. Abbate continues
that the readymade reduces the art object to a function of its ideational content -
that it is ‘merely’ a work of art.
Figure 20: ‘Bicycle Wheel’, 1913 (left) and ‘Fountain’, 1917 (right). Marcel
Duchamp
In a Lecture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1961 Marcel Duchamp
stated that:
34 In real terms since ‘Bicycle Wheel’, 1913 (Figure 20, left). However, Duchamp began using the term ‘readymade’
in 1915 to refer to found objects chosen by the artist as art.
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