Monday, July 28, 2014

Duchamp’s Birthday 3: “...comedy leads to the dissolution of art altogether.” Hegel



Bicycle Wheel
New York, 1951 (third version, after lost original of 1913)
Metal wheel mounted on painted wood stool
51 x 25 x 16 1/2" (129.5 x 63.5 x 41.9 cm)
The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection

Today’s writers on Hegel’s Aesthetics generally leave out a curious and important feature of art’s dissolution, which is that “comedy leads to the dissolution of art altogether” (Knox’ translation, 1975:1236) taking the historical forms of satire (as the end of classical antiquity) and irony (as the dissolution of romantic art).  The omission constitutes a missed opportunity to apply Hegel’s theory of art history to today’s artworld, because contemporary art is dominated by ironic and satirical modes.  It is, in fact, Marcel Duchamp more than any other single artist who shifts the artworld from seriousness and sincerity to satire and irony.  In fact, as I will argue, Duchamp’s innovation constitutes a synthesis of the satiric and ironic forms of art’s dissolution, and therefore inaugurates yet another period of dissolution, one from which we have not yet emerged.  That’s how, as I’ve already suggested, a close reading of art’s dissolution would yield a genuinely Hegelian account of contemporary art from its inception among the Dadaists to the present time.  In order to produce such a reading, it’s necessary to give a detailed treatment of the earlier satirical and ironic dissolutions.

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