CAD Text -Computer Aided Duchamp

This room functions as a footnote to the installation. Duchamp's notes were integral to any understanding of The Large Glass. The type face in the room was created by digitally scanning Duchamp's notes and through use of various computer software, manipulated into a type font which could be typed out with the same ease as any computer type face. This font Has also been uploaded to the internet (America Online) and the use on mundane projects is encouraged (i.e. Garage Sale flyers). Duchamp's concept of a "Ready-made" was to (indifferently) select an object, with no aesthetic appeal and by this choice, the object is as valid as any Created artwork. He also suggested that a reverse ready-made could be accomplished by making an ironing board out of a Rembrandt. This font would be a reverse ready-made in the sense that the notes of Duchamp, which would be considered a valuable art commodity in any Art Market, are transformed into an easily duplicated, egalitarian font which could be used for the most mundane desktop publishing endeavor.

The text contained in the room, in no particular order:


The Large Glass
La MARriee Mise A Nu par Ses CELebataires, Meme
(The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even)

The typeface in this room is a computer font called "Duchamp". It was created by scanning facimilies od Duchamp's notes into the computer, and through several stages of digital alchemy, his handwriting is now a "Readymade" font which can be infinitely copied and disseminated throughout the world for use on the most mundane projects of the Desktop Publisher.

All unatributed Quotes--By Marcel Ducahmp

"The "Green Box" of 1934 contains facimilies of notes all related to the imagery in the Large Glass and should be consulted when seeing the Glass because, as I see it, it must not be looked at in the aestetic sense of the word. One must consult the book and see the two together"

LHOOQ
look

"There is no solution, because there is no problem"

"Mine is the Irony of Indifference, It is a Meta Irony"

"Bad Art, Lazy Art, Self-Indulgent Art, Art without skill, Duchamp is blamed for much of it, but only by those who misread his example"
-Calvin Tomkins --St. Marcel- New Yorker 6-21-93 pp89-92

"People have much more respect for me now. Their attitude amuses me intensely"

"I like breathing better than working"

"Irony is a playful way of accepting something"

"The principle factor in art today is boredom" (1966)

"Use a Rembrandt as an ironing board"

"He was very serious about being amused"
-John Cage

"Fermentation Firm Intention"

"It was a constant battle to make an exact and complete break from the confines of pasr art and expression"

"it's cracked and the Artist decided to leave it that way...something like that"
-Anonymous gallery visitor-Philadelphia Museum of Art 1:30pm 2-4-94
In addition to the mounted text, a rear screen projection into the room cycled through the following quotes, several of which bear a premonition of the computer as an art tool:


"..those who approach it (the Large Glass) with too reverent an air will miss much, for it is rich in comic spirit."
-George Heard Hamilton

"Everything happens through pure luck. Artists who, during their life, have known how to make the most of their junk are excellent travellimg salesman, but nothing guarantees the immortality of their work"

"The machine is a way of establishing your distance from the object"

"just as the invention of a new musical instrumnet changes the whole sensibility of an era, the phenomenon of light can, due to current scientific process, among other things, become the tool for the new artist"

"It's not easy to be nonsensical, Because Nonsensical things so often turn out to make sense"

"do less self-analysis and work with pleasure without worrying yourself about opinions- your own or those of others."

"I never do anything to please myself"

"it's always the idea of 'amusement' that causes me to do things..."

"I am in favor of contradiction and particularly with oneself"

"READYMADE: 'Manufactured objects promoted to the dignity of Objects of art through the choice of the artist"
Andre Breton

'...the readymade can be seen as a sort of irony, or an attempt at showing the futility of trying to define art, beacuse here it is, a thing that I call art. I didn't even make it by myself: as we know, art means to make, to hand make, to make by hand. It's a hand made product of man, and there istead of making, I take it ready made, even thopugh it was made in a factory. But it is not made by hand, so it's a form of denying the possibility of defining art."

" I threw the bottlerack and the urinal into their faces and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty."

"since tubes of paint used by the artist are manufactured and ready-made products, we must conclude that all the paintings in the world are 'Ready-mades aided' and also works of assemblage."

"The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges"

"painting should not be exclusively retinal or visual: it should have more to do with the gray matter, with our urge for understanding"

"I believe that art is the only form of activity in which man as man shows himself to be a true individual"

"bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion"

"Beauty is terrible because we accept it and it becomes commonplace and comfortable. 'Ugl'y doesn't mean anything either, because it is just beauty with a minus sign."

"Art is a habit forming Drug"

"To avoid seriousness, Humor must be introduced. The only seriousness that I could consider is eroticism, because that- that's serious!"

"... I am not a painter in perpetuity and since generals no longer die in the saddle, painters are no longer obliged to die at the easel."

"I am interested in what there is to do, not what I have done."

"To live is to believe; that is my belief, at any rate."

"If the instrument is bad, the skill is tested more."

"...I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."

"Through perspective or through any other conventional means, the lines of design are forced, and lose all their inherent possibilities. It is the more ironic because the artist himself has chosen the body or primitive object, which inevitably takes shape according to the law of perspective- rather than by the virtue of his, the artist's own will."

"I was beginning to appreciate the value of exactness, of precision, and the importance of chance"

"A mechanical drawing has no taste in it"

"Repeat the same thing long enough and it becomes taste"

"repetition has become the great enemy of art..."

"As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted."

"in the Large Glass there is nothing to converse about, unless you make an effort to read the notes in the Green Box. But Who cares? I mean it is not interesting to the public today. It has no public appeal"

"The work of Art is always based on these two poles of the maker and the onlooker, and the spark that comes from this bi-polar action gives birth to something like Electricity."

"The public will kep buying more and more Art, and husbands will start bringing home little paintings to their wives on the way home from work, and were all going to drwon in a sea of mediocrity."

"Art is a marvelous investment for people who would rather buy a painting than Standard Oil."

"today (1963) the integration of art into society forces the artist to submit to its demands..."

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