Vandalism or tribute? Pierre Pinoncelli's interpretation of Duchamp (Monday 16 January 2006)
compiled by Mary Garboden
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| Marcel Duchamp: Fountain, 1917; image held here |
Earlier this month , 77-year-old Pierre Pinoncelli attempted to destroy Marcel Duchamp's Fountain at the Pompidou Centre in Paris with a small hammer. Duchamp's piece, a urinal said by many to be the cornerstone of Conceptual Art, suffered little damage, however, and was withdrawn from the exhibition entitled Dada for minor repairs only.
An act of terrorism? Few would think so. The lashing out of a disturbed individual? The jury's still out on that one. An attempt to bring Dadaism to a new and literal level and thus create an original piece of art? Apparently so. A sound or effective attempt? More than one might think at first...
Many people, including the writer who covered this story in the New York Times, consider Pinoncelli as nothing more than an attention-seeking old man. In 1993, when he was on trial for attacking the same Duchamp piece by urinating into it before striking it with a hammer in Nîmes, the presiding judge gave the Frenchman a relatively lenient sentence because it was thought that he only wanted to "hijack the fame of the original artist" rather than actually destroy anything. Despite such opinions, those who understand the Dada movement can see that Pinoncelli's apparent madness is based in exactly the same place that Duchamp's primary principle as an artist was, all those years ago when the majority of the art world called him crazy. Fountain was, after all, rejected from an exhibition in New York when the artist presented it for the first time in 1917.
Saying that his rash acts are a tribute to Duchamp and other Dadaists, Pinoncelli is making an important point about today's consideration of the 'anti-art' which sprang from beliefs in nihilism, the destruction of culture, and reactions against prevailing principles that some felt restricted artistic activity. Dada originated as a movement to protest the horrific first World War and the cultural standards and interests the group's followers believed had inspired it. With this attitude of rejection at its heart, Dada stood for the opposite of everything commonly considered to be valuable: in visual art, aesthetics, the enjoyment of viewers, and the conveyance of any message whatsoever were cast aside in the name of breaking through barriers that had brought society to the unfortunate state in which it currently found itself.
Despite the shock and skepticism with which Dada was initially considered, over the years, it has worked its way into museums and is now registered in people's minds as falling under the category of 'proper art'. The irony of this situation is what Pinoncelli is trying to call to our attention. By attacking Duchamp's work - work originally intended to puzzle, offend, and annoy - which is now so widely praised and recognised that in 2004Fountain was ranked as the most influential work of modern art by a poll of leading figures in the art world - Pinoncelli is attempting to restore the original artist's principle to the piece. Duchamp wanted to deconstruct common ideas about art and its presentation; Pinoncelli, in his turn, is acting according to the same principles, but, as standards have shifted to favour artists like Duchamp, he must turn the older master's work back on itself, destroying it in order to save it.
And the truth is, according to his philosophy, this is exactly what Duchamp would have wanted. The fact that Pinoncelli took an ordinary object that had been turned into art and turned it back into an ordinary object by pointing to its original everyday function and commonplace status is exactly the sort of play with perception and interpretation Duchamp promoted. It seems that Pinoncelli has taken the artist's desire to 'break down' definitions of art literally, and in so doing, has created a finer tribute to Duchamp than any exhibition at the Pompidou Centre could ever hope to be.
sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/arts/design/07duch.html?emc=etal
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,,1681095,00.html
http://members.lycos.fr/pinoncelli
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I think this piece about Duchamp is sensitive, compelling
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