Negotiating Meaning in The Radicant Take 3

Questions relating to Readymade art

1. Has the artist as selector replaced the artist as creator in our culture? I think so, and I find this transformation ominous as it seems superficial and transient.

2. While the origins of readymade art are quite revolutionary, could our current day proclivities toward readymade art be connected to our culture of sedentary privilege?

3. How does readymade art differ from post-production art? Could postproduction art be seen, at a certain level, as a simply a number of readymades displayed in relation to one another?

4. On page 148, Bourriaud comments that "Displacement is a way of using the world, a way of surreptitiously eroding established geographies." In an increasingly globalized world, will we reach a point where such displacement is no longer possible? Will we reach a point in art where readymades have lost their power as an objects ability to be displaced diminishes?

5. If choice is all that is necessary to distinguish a work of art, does quality have any place in our discussion of a work of art (specifically readymade art)? Choice can be seen as a representation of personal taste-- are we condemning ourselves to a world of mediocre art by reducing the role that manual skill plays in art?

Artists mentioned:

Subodh Gupta

Curry 2

2005

Thomas Hirschhorn

Tool Table

Navin Rawanchaikul ART or (M)ART?

2002, Acrylic on wood 488x732cm

Installation view "SUPER(M)ART", Palais de Tokyo

Sam Durant

Porcelain Chair

"This work consists of nine unique, porcelain reproductions of different styles of mono-block resin chairs. The chairs were made by crafts people at the Jiao Zhi studio in Xiamen, China, completely by hand, no molds were taken from the originals. The place and method by which they were made is important to the meaning of the work in several ways, most obviously as it contrasts with the manufacturing process of the mass-produced resin chair on which it is based. Mono-block resin chairs are made using the injection molding process..."

Why is it that Durant is able, here, to speak of the political repercussions of the chair's reproduction and the 'transformations' that take place in this process, while ignoring the political implication of the means of its reproduction?

Marcel Duchamp

Etant Donnes

1946-1966

The re-emergence of craft.