Duchamp and the Aesthetics of Chance

Duchamp and the Aesthetics of Chance PDF Author: Herbert Molderings
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231519745
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Book Description
Marcel Duchamp is often viewed as an "artist-engineer-scientist," a kind of rationalist who relied heavily on the ideas of the French mathematician and philosopher Henri Poincaré. Yet a complete portrait of Duchamp and his multiple influences draws a different picture. In his 3 Standard Stoppages (1913-1914), a work that uses chance as an artistic medium, we see how far Duchamp subverted scientism in favor of a radical individualistic aesthetic and experimental vision. Unlike the Dadaists, Duchamp did more than dismiss or negate the authority of science. He pushed scientific rationalism to the point where its claims broke down and alternative truths were allowed to emerge. With humor and irony, Duchamp undertook a method of artistic research, reflection, and visual thought that focused less on beauty than on the notion of the "possible." He became a passionate advocate of the power of invention and thinking things that had never been thought before. The 3 Standard Stoppages is the ultimate realization of the play between chance and dimension, visibility and invisibility, high and low art, and art and anti-art. Situating Duchamp firmly within the literature and philosophy of his time, Herbert Molderings recaptures the spirit of a frequently misread artist-and his thrilling aesthetic of chance.

Duchamp and the Aesthetics of Chance

Duchamp and the Aesthetics of Chance PDF Author: Herbert Molderings
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231147627
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
Situating Duchamp firmly within the literature & philosophy of his time, Herbert Molderings recaptures the spirit of a frequently misread artist & his aesthetic of chance.

Chance Aesthetics

Chance Aesthetics PDF Author: Meredith Malone
Publisher: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Book Description
Catalog of an exhibition held at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Sept. 18, 2009-Jan. 4, 2010.

Sprezzatura

Sprezzatura PDF Author: Paolo D'Angelo
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231540345
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 151

Book Description
The essence of art is to conceal art. A dancer or musician does not only need to perform with ability. There should also be a lack of visible effort that gives an impression of naturalness. To disguise technique and feign ease is to heighten beauty. To express this notion, Italian has a word with no exact equivalent in other languages, sprezzatura: a kind of unaffectedness or nonchalance. In this book, the first to consider sprezzatura in its own right, philosopher of art Paolo D’Angelo reconstructs the history of concealing art, from ancient rhetoric to our own times. The word sprezzatura was coined in 1528 by Baldassarre Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier to mean a kind of grace with a special essence: the ability to conceal art. But the idea reaches back to Aristotle and Cicero and forward to avant-garde works such as Duchamp’s ready-mades, all of which share the suspicion of the overt display of skill. The precept that art must be hidden turns up in a number of fields, from cosmetics to interior design, politics to poetry, the English garden to shabby chic. Through exploring different articulations of this idea, D’Angelo shows the paradox of aesthetics: art hides that it is art, but in doing so it reveals itself to be art and becomes an assertion about art. When art is concealed, it appears as spontaneous as nature—yet, paradoxically, also reveals its indebtedness to technique. An erudite and surprising tour through aesthetics, philosophy, and art history, Sprezzatura presents a strikingly original argument with deceptive ease.

Dadas on Art

Dadas on Art PDF Author: Lucy R. Lippard
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486456994
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
A select anthology of the Dada movement focusing mainly on visual artists features prose, poetry, and polemics from such notables as Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Tristan Tzara, Hanna Hèoch, George Grosz, and Jean Cocteau.

Thinking with Images

Thinking with Images PDF Author: John M. Carvalho
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429869916
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
This book advances an enactivist theory of aesthetics through the study of inscrutable artworks that challenge us to think because we do not know what to think about them. John M. Carvalho presents detailed analyses a four artworks that share this unique characteristic: Francis Bacon’s Study After Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953), the photographs of Duane Michals, based on a retrospective of his work, Storyteller, at the Carnegie Museum of Art (2014), Étant donnés (1968) by Marcel Duchamp, and Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film Le Mépris (released in the United States as Contempt). Carvalho argues against the application of theory to derive appreciation or meaning from these artistic works. Rather, each study enacts an embodied cognitive engagement with the specific artworks intended to demonstrate the value of thinking about artworks that might be extended to our engagement with the world in general. This thinking happens, as these studies show, when we trust our embodied skills and their guide to what artworks and the world around us afford for the activation and refinement of those skills. Thinking with Images will be of interest to scholars working in the philosophy of art and philosophical aesthetics, as well as art historians concerned with the meaning and value of contemporary art.

Chance, Phenomenology and Aesthetics

Chance, Phenomenology and Aesthetics PDF Author: Ian Andrews
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350148482
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
In drawing upon the work of Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger and aligning it with a new trend in interdisciplinary phenomenology, Ian Andrews provides a unique look at the role of chance in art and its philosophical implications. His account of how the composer John Cage and other avant-garde creatives such as Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Sol LeWitt and Ed Ruscha used chance in their work to question the structures of experience and prompt a new engagement with these phenomena makes a truly important contribution to Continental philosophy. Chance, Phenomenology and Aesthetics will appeal to scholars and advanced students in the disciplines of phenomenology, deconstruction and hermeneutics, as well as being compelling reading for anyone interested in pursuing sound studies, art theory and art history through an interdisciplinary post-phenomenological lens.

Pictorial Nominalism

Pictorial Nominalism PDF Author: Thierry De Duve
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 081664859X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Book Description
Reveals the invention of the readymade as a critical point in contemporary art.

Unpacking Duchamp

Unpacking Duchamp PDF Author: Dalia Judovitz
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520213760
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Book Description
"Transit, transitional, transition: Dalia Judovitz catches Marcel Duchamp on the run with his art in a suitcase and his thought all boxed and ready to go. . . . She demonstrates how the theme of transition, reappearing from work to work, makes each piece reproduce some other piece, while all continue to exemplify an original which can no longer be found and which has no creator."—Jean-François Lyotard

Sculpture in the Age of Doubt

Sculpture in the Age of Doubt PDF Author: Thomas McEvilley
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 9781581150230
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 466

Book Description
Framed in a lucid discussion of the intellectual issues surrounding the postmodern movement, the essays in this book re-examine the course of twentieth-century art through the work of twenty-five major sculptors. McEvilley masterfully traces the evolution of modern sculpture from the readymades of Marcel Duchamp to the anti-painting statements of the 1960s to the spiritualism and conceptualism of the 1980s and 1990s. This is a groundbreaking work in the field of art criticism and a fundamental text for anyone interested in the history of current art and culture. Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.