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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