My exhibition - titled portraying yourself thinking about loving - acts as a personal exploration of memory, and an articulation of the ways in which experimental art has inextricably impacted my worldview - I would argue, for the better. The exhibition is made of two major artworks, mentioned above - in the following paragraphs I will be analyzing and historically contextualizing these artworks in relation to modernism.
Marcel Duchamp’s infamous artwork Fountain needs no introduction - it’s polarizing political and artistic nature has made it a symbol of Modernism and Dada in the public consciousness. For those who aren’t familiar, Fountain (a prime example of Duchamp’s idea of Readymades) is a porcelain urinal, inscribed on it’s base: “R. Mutt, 1917” - R. Mutt being a pseudonym of Duchamp’s.
Kelly Grovier’s 2017 article “The urinal that changed how we think” further contextualizes the history of the abstruse urinal. Duchamp created the work to test the limits of what people were willing to consider an ‘artwork’. As a founding member of the Society of Independent artists in New York, and an advocate for their avant-garde principles, he submitted Fountain to be shown in an exhibition in 1917. To his dismay, the artwork was voted out “on the grounds of aesthetic crudity” - which led to his personal decision to resign. He was able to smuggle the work out of the organization’s possession, and eventually had it photographed by Aflred Stieglitz - the image that most of us associate with Fountain today.
81 years after the creation of Fountain, Gastr Del Sol released their album Camofluer - which could be considered experimental indie rock, but which hybridizes multiple genres into a unique multifaceted style. The first track of the album is called The Seasons Reverse - a fast-paced melancholic song describing a world in which the arrow of time is manipulated depending on specific personal experiences.
As soon as the song begins, we’re thrown right into it’s world, as fast-paced sixteenth note percussion loops begin to rush by, being contrasted in speed and timbre by finger-plucked guitar chords on every quarter note. As a listener, the song positions me within an emotional experience which is strong but which cannot be pinned down to a singular thing - by being non-prescriptive, it envelops me in an experience that feels more honest and reflective about the complex feelings which come with experiencing a life.
Modernism plays an inextricable role in developing some of the most impactful philosophies in the history of experimental art as a whole, and so, I would argue that Gastr Del Sol’s The Seasons Reverse is inextricable from that history. The relationship of the album as whole to experimental electronic music and free jazz makes this abundantly clear.
So what is modernism? Modernism refers to an art movement in the 20th century, positioning itself as a radical split from the expectations of popular culture - it explores a range of themes, like innovation, hybridity, and industrialization. Modernism is indistinct - it doesn’t describe a particular entity, but a collection of practices and occurrences, which influence each other within a diffused network. Modernism, as we know it today, wasn’t described until the mid 20th century, further driving home the point that it’s a way of thinking about things rather than a distinct thing in of itself.
In Marcel Duchamp’s essay “The Great Trouble with Art in This Country”, he describes the pitfalls of traditional artmaking, and talks about how his artwork relates and contrasts to that of several Modernist art movements - Cubism, Futurism, Impressionism, and of course Dadaism - which he describes as "a way to get out of a state of mind—to avoid being influenced by one’s immediate environment, or by the past: to get away from cliches—to get free".
The constructivist view contrasts this greatly, in it’s proposition of the incompatibility between knowledge-making and art-making - In Alexander Rodchenko and Vavra Stepanova’s Program of the Productivist Group they break down their ideology into two components: “a) Proving by word and deed the incompatibility of artistic activity and intellectual production / b) The real participation of intellectual production as an equivalent element”. Their attitude succinctly expressed later, with the statement: “Down with art. / Love live technic.”
“Cannibalism alone unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically.” - This is the first line of Oswald de Andrade’s 1928 essay the Cannibalist Manifesto. The last two paragraphs references texts which are canonized within Western Modernism, while this one exists within the context of Brazilian Modernism - a movement which was in conversation with the latter, while critiquing the false narrative of Europe as the primary source for artistic innovation. Through an anachronistic and poetic style of writing, the author explores the idea of cannibalism - that being a term to refer to the transmogification of the physical and cultural byproducts of colonialism into forms which can give a platform to the oppressed.
These disparate examples of modernist thought make it clear just how wide of an umbrella Modernism is. Despite their differences, these artistic philosophies are in deep conversation with one another, and each share the goal of radical innovation.
When researching and conversing about Modernism, I can’t help but question the value of art in a broader cultural context - I know that art history is entwined with much of modern popular culture, and that everything has trickle-down effects on everything else, and that every part of culture has value for just existing even if it doesn’t have tangible utility - but I would like to propose that the ways of thinking associated with experimental art, much of which being entwined with histories of modernism, have a radical potential when applied to external contexts like your process and perspective of everyday life.