It’s an odd sensation, one that often seems to occur when faced with a vaunted work of art – the compulsion to destroy it. I’ve felt it during Art Week, here in Mexico City. And in Russia this week, there have been reports of a security guard who was arrested on his first day at his job at a museum for drawing a set of eyes in ballpoint pen onto the blank faces of ‘Three Figures’, by the painter Anna Leporskaya. Many will be shocked by the news but, in truth, most of us will laugh.
There’s some irony about defacing a work of modern art – not least because so much of modern art is already concerned with the art’s defacement. Let’s turn to Duchamp, for example: his ‘L.H.O.O.Q.’ depicts the Mona Lisa with glasses, a moustache and a goatee drawn on in marker pen; it’s the typical graffiti you’d be just as likely to see scribbled into a high school yearbook portrait today, more than 100 years later. We could also consider Duchamp’s urinal, ‘Fuente’, which still causes arguments as to whether or not anybody can truly call it “art”. These effects were all intended by Duchamp, aiding him in his mission to devalue the word art as a label.
This tradition of irreverence is still alive and well today. Many of the works I’ve remembered from this week have made me laugh: a ping pong table, slimmed down to unplayably thin proportions; a grotesque pink figurine, bearing a United Nations crest on its cape and an Illuminati-style golden pyramid in its hand. These pieces are not intended to be beautiful, as art more often used to be. In fact they are intended to be comedic, if not intentionally ugly. And while they are not necessarily my favourite works – in fact, far from it – I think that comic art has its place.
So what is the value of Duchamp’s work? What is the place of comic art? In short, it forces a re-engagement with the practice. As opposed to art being intended to display some elevated mode or technique, many modern works are intended to make us really consider our own idea of what art is – or what it could be. It’s about showcasing new ways of thinking, rather than new objects of craft. For instance, the spoiled Mona Lisa, hung in a gallery, signals a clear intellectual break with that era of veneration of renaissance art; the urinal, too, points toward the ridiculousness of anything being called “art”, as such.
And that work by Leporskaya – it’s modern as well. It owes a debt to Duchamp. The artwork itself is distilled into something that’s closer to an intellectual notion than something that would have been traditionally recognised as “art”: three figures, literally de-faced, on a nondescript background. And so, who can blame the Russian guard in question for drawing on some eyes? Those doodled-on details are, in their own ingenuous way, a comment on what art could or should be. Because this comment doesn’t have the intellectual scaffolding that Duchamp once showcased, the guard will be punished rather than applauded. But perhaps that’s a shame – it made us laugh in much the same way. And maybe, just a little, it made us think as well. What’s modern art for, if not for that?
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And what’s our time for, if we don’t allow ourselves a break occasionally? I’ll be taking next week off, so don’t expect an email. Or do, if you like – but you won’t receive one.
Below is a link to my interview with the founder of Zona Maco, the biggest art fair in Latin America, which is currently in full swing here in Mexico City. If you’re interested in hearing more about the art world’s recent pivot toward Latinx artists, tune in.
https://monocle.com/radio/shows/the-monocle-daily/2132/
Oh, and sorry this one came late. Hopefully it didn’t upset any of you too much.
Keep well all,
Louis