The Ready-Made And The Question Of The Fabrication Of Objects And Subjects - Critical Essay

Afterimage, Jan, 2001 by Suzana Milevska

Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it.

Marcel Duchamp [1]

I want to be a machine.

Andy Warhol [2]

The phenomenon of the ready-made and its usage as an art object (and possibly later as an installation) is proximal to the abandonment of the art craft. If painting signifies art, skill and craftsmanship, then, with the onset of industrialism, craftsmanship was rendered useless, and thereby, so was painting. Nevertheless, new technical achievements have continued to emerge from within the realm of painting.

Today, the international art scene is moving dramatically in a new direction. When it comes to participation in large international exhibitions, the growing tendency has been to rely on the use of new technologies and new and serious obstacles have been placed in front of artists coming from the East. The possible frustration of such artists is derived from the usage of objects that are completely industrially produced or even ordered to be produced. In the case of exhibiting ready-made objects, the painter has been replaced by a machine. This proves that the motivation for ready-made objects was closely related to production and fabrication, [3] although, Marcel Duchamp, for one, did not have in mind any obsession or glorification of the perfection and beauty of the ready-made "When I discovered the ready-mades I thought to discourage aesthetics." [4]

Differing visual and conceptual results are a consequence of the acceptance and presentation of the readymade object as part of artistic activity, specifically in the context of the Balkan region--a region in which industrial production, following World War II, has never been applied in a complete capitalist free market economy. [5] In fact, in all socialist countries, there existed a kind of "simulation of production" in which ideological emphasis was put on the fulfillment of a social policy of full employment and on the quantity of production, while the quality of the manufactured objects were of secondary importance. Of course, this was possible only under special circumstances wherein industrialization and the market functioned under state supervision and control--a system that survived until the period of transition following the break-up of the Yugoslav federation and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. From this point a series of complex political and economic transitions began that continue to evol ve today.

According to Adorno's aesthetic theory, there is a relationship between the level of development in a given society and the art produced in that society. [6] If we accept this, then there must be a difference between the art produced by these societies and their production development. The nature of the situation today can only be explained by the ongoing process of globalization and the will to simulate that they are equal participants in it. During the transition from one mode of production to another, and from one model of ownership to another, a whole range of relationships have changed. The invisible patterns that rule western society (long suppressed in the East), have started emerging as "desiring machines," [7]--unconscious mechanisms latent in the individual but also in social and historical structures.

The usage of high technology for art purposes poses a question about development in the arts--an unsolvable problem that creates many paradoxes, not only in countries with underdeveloped technological capacities. Although this article aims to give an overview of some of the different applications of ready-made objects by artists living in unstable political and economic regions in times of transition, another aim is to examine the limits of the ready-made object as a medium. Artists using ready-made objects usually exhibit perfectly produced and iterated forms in order to give installations a look of unification and repetition, with no difference among the repeated objects--an effect possible only if the objects in question are industrially produced. As mentioned before, the problem here is that different visual effects and meanings are produced when the ready-made object is faulty in its original production or montage. Furthermore, the term "perfection," as used in its high-technological context, is problem atic when used in the context of art. Issues of technicality, materiality, tools and media have always been important, although not the only consideration in art-making; the discovery of certain rules has always been connected with certain technical means. Therefore, an artist today who avoids the latest high-tech wonders must still confront the question of means.

What, then, makes the ready-made different when it is made and represented as artwork in the region of the Balkans--a region where socialism has been intermixed with inefficient productive means? It never looks as perfect as the objects made in western countries since the tools and means of production are not perfect themselves (similarly, this argument can also be taken into account when it comes to the installations presented in the wider Eastern European context). How the management context, the free market economy or strong competition effects the perfection of products is not more important than ready-made objects being beautiful or imperfect. Should the form of the readymade object not be essential to its own existence as a way of revolting against the act of skillful artmaking?