Everything gets recuperated: Duchamp and Banksy

Posted 07 March 2007 23:16 by Kristof Michiels

Last week I got quite uneasy because last.fm was rumoured to being sold to Viacom. This has not happened until now, so I might have jumped to conclusions too quickly. But in our capitalist system it's a sad truth that, given enough time, everything gets recuperated. In many cases ironically enough by the system it tends to criticise.

Take for instance the artist Marcel Duchamp and his 'readymade' urinal which shocked the art world in 1917. Duchamp signed an ordinary urinal with the pseudonym 'R. Mutt', named it Fountain, placed it in a gallery exhibition and claimed it was art. The art historian in me should now write that 'Duchamp wanted to state that the creative act is not performed by an artist alone. The spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus contributes to the creative act' :-) But be that as it may: it was also a clear attack at the existing western art tradition as a whole. An attack we can still feel today, one that somehow signified the death of art as art institutions claimed it to be.

Today, copies of the initial fountain (the 'original' has not survived) and other readymades can be found in the largest and most renowned museums in the world, with an estimated value of nearly 3 million euros each on the art market. Enter the recuperation. And given the way they are being displayed, museums now do not only venerate the revolutionary ideas Duchamp projected onto this readymade object, but also the object itself. Duchamp towards the end of his life has written bitterly about this: 'I threw the bottle-rack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty'.

The credit for reminding us to this fact goes to the French performance artist Pierre Pinoncelli (77). To make his statement, he damaged two of the eight existing copies with a hammer. The first time at an exhibition in Nîmes in 1993 where, before hitting it with a hammer, he also relieved himself into it. The most recent attack happened in January 2006 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, during a Dada exhibition. The enraged museum sued Pinoncelli to pay 427000 euros, a lawsuit they lost last month (Pinoncelli only has to pay for the restauration costs). In my opinion, they should thank him for it. Pinoncelli was doing something in the very spirit of the piece, exposing the fact that museums are now putting Duchamp's conceptual statement on an esthetic pedestal. I believe Duchamp would certainly have applauded it. In any case Pinoncelli did more for the fountain than museums have done for it since they've recuperated it.

Another interesting case of recuperation in the art world is happening as we speak. It involves the work of the street artist Banksy. His works are mostly satirical pieces which encompass topics from politics, society, and the art world. They feature striking and humorous images sometimes combined with slogans. Their message is strongly anti-capitalist, anti-establishment and pro-freedom. A recent book, Wall and Piece (which I recommend), offers a good insight. In it Banksy writes the following about the art world:

Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions and buy records by the billions. We the people, affect the making and the quality of most of our culture, but not our art.

The Art we look at is made by only a select few. A small group create, promote, purchase, exhibit and decide the succes of Art. Only a few hundred people in the world have any real say. When you go to an Art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.

But the fact is that the art world he so despises is going absolutely crazy over his works, and Banksy plays the game along. Auction houses are selling his works at record prices (going up to nearly 150000 euros a piece). And a few days ago a Banksy exhibition opened in a London art gallery, selling 15 canvases and over 30 signed limited edition prints, at astronomical prices.

Banksy himself seems to be uneasy with the situation and displayed (until recently) on his website a drawing of an art auction with the text 'I can't believe your morons actually buy this shit'. I wonder how Banksy will cope with this schizophrenic situation in his future work. It's not all in his hands however: last month the owners of a house with a Banksy graffiti mural on the side in Bristol decided to sell the house through an art gallery. It is listed as a mural which comes with a house attached :-)