I found a copy of Will Gompertz's What Are You Looking At: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art at my own local art museum. I always take a quick turn around the gift shop (museum gift shops are really dangerous places, don't you think?) when I visit. I love to look at all the art books and lust from afar (because art books are almost always so pricey), but this time I knew I had to have it. My degree is in Art History, but I have never put it to any good use and now so many years have passed I feel completely out of touch with the art world. I still look at art a lot, but I have not read very much, especially in the last few years.
It was an idea in the back of my mind (still . . . even though we are midway through July) to have a little project going to read about art--nonfiction, essays, maybe even literature. But it is a plan I have yet pursued. As I was thinking of how to get back into the routine of reading nonfiction and was perusing my stacks of books, this one jumped out at me. Gompertz is the BBC Arts editor and was a board director for the Tate Gallery. He has also done stand up comedy. Stand up comedy as relating to art. What a combination, right? It seemed like not only a really fun book to read, and maybe even a little irreverent, but also filled with facts and information and history and hopefully lots of practical explanations.
I don't know as much as I should about modern and contemporary art as I should (my own personal interest when studying was early 20th century Austrian and Russian art), but I find it quite interesting often very thought provoking. But what does it all mean? Maybe Gompertz can finally help me suss it all out in an easy and understandable manner. He notes in his preface that this book is not meant to be a scholarly or academic work, rather "a personal, anecdotal and informative book that undertakes to tell the chronological story of modern art from Impressionism to now." In twenty chapters he undertakes the task of writing about writing about successive chunks of time focusing on all the various 'isms' and artists who have helped transform the art world.
I'm not alone in trying to understand what artists are trying to do. Is it art? What makes it great? In the introduction he offers some ideas to many art lovers' bewilderment of modern and contemporary art.
"The problem this new audience has faced, the problem we all face when encountering a new work of art, is one of comprehension."
Even trained academics and those who work within the art world at museums or galleries often feel daunted when seeing a new work for the first time and can feel intimidated by it. Gompertz says the real issue isn't whether a work of art if "good or bad--time will undertake that job on our behalf."
"It is more a question of understanding where and why it fits into modern art history."
The key to understanding and appreciating modern (spanning 1860s to 1970s) and contemporary art (art being produced by artists who are still alive) is seeing how it all fits together and how it evolved over time.
"Each movement, each 'ism', is intricately connected, one leading to another like links in a chain. But they all have their own individual approaches, distinct styles and methods of making art, which are the culmination of a wide variety of influences: artistic, political, social and technological."
I think art parallels literature and music, too, and it would be interesting to see how everything even relates to each other (but that is a whole different project, I think). Gompertz begins with Marcel Duchamp's famous 1917 'readymade' sculpture, "The Fountain". In a very breezy and chatty (and wholly accessible) way, he explains why Duchamp's urinal (keeping in mind that the artist liked to play on words and poke fun at the pomposity of the art world) has become "the single most influential artwork created in the twentieth century."
Duchamp was poking fun at the establishment, at the rules laid down by them, at the conservatism of attitude towards modern art. He wanted to enter it into the 1917 Independents Exhibition (Duchamp was himself a member of the organizing committee), but he entered it under a pseudonym. Fountain was meant to be confrontational and stir up how art was made and thought of.
"Duchamp thought it was for artists to decide what was and was not a work of art. His position was that if an artist said something was a work of art, having influenced its context and meaning, then it was a work of art. He realized that although this was a fairly simple proposition to grasp, it could cause a revolution in the art world."
Hence his buying something so mundane as a porcelain urinal and attempting to enter it into an art exhibit. The medium was secondary to the idea behind it. Previously the medium came first and an artist would project his or her idea on to it through painting, drawing or sculpting.
"The Art is in the idea, not the object."
The amusing thing is that original urinal was rejected as an entry and no longer exists. It (or a quickly made reproduction) was photographed by Alfred Stieglitz and so the idea was out there and could not be unmade.
"Duchamp redefined what art was and could be."
So . . . revolutionary! Duchamp may have had a hand in changing the course of art history, but he didn't start it. For that we need to back to the pre-Impressionists, which is where the next chapter will take me. And if I get to it in the coming week, on to the Impressionists. I'm hoping to read a chapter or two each week and then write about my readings in some way--mostly for myself to sort out all those concepts and ideas and maybe help keep them straight and firmly planted in my mind. I think it is going to be a very interesting journey.