After a talk at the Hellenic American Union last night
Readymade
My take on the conversation that though interesting it never had a litrosis
Readymade is not an abstract term. It is a specific name that Marcel Duchamp gave to a series of works that had beginning and END! He had predetermined the end of this production knowing himself that the work could not continue, otherwise the farse would seize to have power. Later on this work opened up many doors etc, introduced a new medium and liberties to artist and eventually developed to a three dimensional collage. Collage is not something that has less of a value but it is not a readymade. It is not more or less interesting than another work of art just because it uses found objects, it is just a different medium. Not even Marcel Duchamp could continue to make readymades, because the power of this work couldn’t have repeated once the statement was made. What happened to that statement, apart of the “liberation” that it brought to the techniques and ideas that came later on, is what happens to every revolution. It got drowned and arts way of drowning a revolution is absorbing it and creating a market around it.
The next revolution that we see and we will see hopefully in full development that challenged the commercial system is Open Source, where the fear of holding on to an idea gets demolished, and the power of the market gets frowned upon.
