Saturday, January 26, 2013

The Infinite Art Tournament, Round One: Duchamp v. Dufy!

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the third of the eight initial brackets!

Marcel Duchamp
1887 - 1968
French




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Raoul Dufy
1877 - 1953
French



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Vote for the artist of your choice!  Votes go in the comments.  Commentary and links to additional work are welcome.  Polls open for at least one month past posting.

19 comments:

Elizabeth said...

I saw the small picture on Facebook and thought "that can't be a urinal, can it?" but yes, indeed it is. I may be pissing away my vote but I am going for Dufy here.

Christine M. said...

Dufy made wonderful fabric designs, and he did the sets for An American in Paris, my dad's favorite movie. Duchamp was a genius who changed the course of Western art. Duchamp 1 - Dufy 0.

Chuckdaddy said...

I've been waiting for the Duchamp matchup because I'm excited to see how people react to him. Right now I am firmly in his camp. A urinal is a beautiful example of symmetry when you think about it! And to pick one with graffiti? Brilliant! I could see myself tiring and turning on him at some point- but not yet

lamanyana said...

Yeah - I think I have to side w/ Duchamp here as well. I appreciate the conceptual stuff and I also like his paintings.

mrs.5000 said...

Duchamp! Definitely. I am especially fond of the valises and The Large Glass.

Morgan said...

Not a huge fan of either, but I'll go for Dufy.

pfly said...

Oh, Duchamp, yes. I'm a Duchamp fan in the kind of way I'm a fan of John Cage, which is to say somewhat conceptually over aesthetically? Although like others have mentioned, the "Large Glass" AKA "The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even", has been a long time favorite of mine.

As for the urinal, well, if nothing else Brian Eno has a fun story about how he urinated on it once, by bringing a little bottom of urine and a tube into the MoMA and slipping the tube through the a slot in glass in front of the "art"...

In any case, Duchamp pushed the boundaries of art in ways people still haven't caught up with or come to terms with, for the most part. The rather obvious example of how a urinal isn't "art" unless you put it in the "frame" of being in a museum, which makes people think of it in terms of art...is the mere surface of the kind of issues he brought to the fore...

pfly said...

(oop, when I say "others" I mean just mrs.5000, high five!)

pfly said...

(um, also, pardon my typo... *bottle* of urine, sheesh)

pfly said...

Permit me one more comment while I'm thinking about it. I once heard a story, perhaps apocryphal, that after spending years working on "The Large Glass" and finally exhibiting it, then moving it and having it accidentally dropped and shattered into pieces, Duchamp said "now it is complete". And sure enough, one of the things I like most about "The Large Glass" is the cracks in it.

Duchamp carefully repaired the original, which is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Apparently there are two replicas he had made. I don't know--are they also cracked? And if so, how was that done?

Jenners said...

Dufy

PB said...

Time for an end of month vote binge! I'll go with Dufy on this one.

Sarah Nopp said...

That is a tough one. I love the vibrancy of Dufy, and the approachable scale. But I think I have to go with Duchamp. He was one of those thinkers that liked to challenge. And his works and acts are reverberating today. Plus, I am finding myself drawn into abstracts more lately.

mrs.5000 said...

On Duchamp's "The Large Glass": we have a book with good pictures of the replica in the Tate, and the glass isn't broken. I was astonished when I first saw it like that--I do like the cracks, and the story of Duchamp's acceptance of the cracks, and am used to thinking of them as intrinsic to the piece.

Michael5000 said...

A vote-by-mail is arrived for the cheerful Dufy.

Alison said...

Du...fy?

Michael5000 said...

Duchamp for me. It's not his fault that generations of subsequent artists would interrogate the notion of blah blah blah by hanging white canvases on the wall. If folks were a little more on the ball, a lot of the unfortunate turns in 20th century art (and the sadder rooms at MOMA) could have been headed off with reference to Duchamp: it's been done, and better.

Candida said...

Lots of intellectual respect to Duchamp, but no love. Dufy gets my vote tonight.

Michael5000 said...

And the winner is... oh man, another tie: Dufy 7, DuChamp 7. That means that... that... I'll have to check the rules, actually, to see what that means.

But, voting is closed in this match!