All the artistic currents that succeeded each other during the 20th century asked the same questions about the definition of art. Surrealism, abstraction, cubism, dada… They all questioned its forms, both modern and traditional, its codes and its purpose. Jean Baptiste Gouraud, a painter, reveals three masterpieces from this period: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, Mondrian’s New York City and a portrait of Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol.
Fountain by Marcel Duchamp
Fontaine, created by Marcel Duchamp under an assumed name at the Society of Independent Artists of New York, is one of the key works of the twentieth century. It was unthinkable! How can a simple industrially manufactured urinal be considered 100% as a fundamental work of art? It was in 1916 that Duchamp used the term “ready-made” to designate and conceive some of his works. But what exactly is it all about? It is a common, ready-made object that the artist appropriates, that he diverts from its primary use and of which he claims its artistic value.
Immediately, the object is judged by art critics as “immoral and vulgar”, described as “a commercial piece resembling the art of the plumber”. Duchamp then sets out to parody what a work should be. He presents it as a sculpture with a title, dated, and it is with great humour and irony that Duchamp signs his work under the pseudonym of R. Mutt. This name is the trademark. For Jean Baptiste Gouraud, by reusing a urinal, Duchamp shows here his total indifference in terms of aesthetics or convenience.
Moreover, it calls into question the creative thinking and know-how of the artist. The choice of the object is not innocent, it expresses the artist’s radical desire to demystify art. What is art for Duchamp? It is the idea of the artist who makes the work, Vinci had claimed it before him. Duchamp erected his urinal as a fountain through his artistic thinking. If a common object can become a work of art, the reverse is true: a painting by Rembrandt could become an ironing board! Duchamp is a major artist who from the beginning of the 20th century posed the essential question of the definition of art and paved the way for the conceptual artists of the second half of the 20th century.
According to Jean-Baptiste Gouraud, the position he defended at the time was that, basically, a work of art must have an intention, an approach. He notes that modern art with currents such as impressionism, pointillism, cubism is more concerned with its means than with its content. Technical performance prevails over meaning. Duchamp, swimming against the current, takes on a totally intellectual art form. Producing the object with his own hands would be of secondary importance. What matters in the end is to conceive it mentally. Duchamp chooses manufactured objects of a disconcerting banality that he calls “Ready-Made”. A “Ready-Made” is a work of art, not by its nature, physical, or because it is beautiful, but because the artist says so. And only because the artist says so. According to this logic, any object here could be a work of art. This for example, as long as it is signed by the artist. Fontaine is one of Duchamp’s best known works, which paved the way for many contemporary artists.
Mondrian’s New York City
He will have many followers of Pop Art to the new realists. New York City is a work, created in 1942 by the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, founder of Neoplasticism. Let’s see how this abstract painting composed of intertwined bands of colour imposes itself as a radically avant-garde work of the 20th century. The title evokes a landscape of buildings, yet the painting presents to the eye only a geometrically shaped assemblage. According to Jean Baptiste Gouraud, there is no reference to reality, no perspective, no shadow, no light. Among the founders of abstraction, Mondrian proposes a painting detached from the imitation of the object to retain only the fundamentals of pictorial creation: lines and colours applied to a flat surface. Yellow, red and blue stripes are superimposed on a white background.
It is a painting representing tangled lines that meet at right angles to form squares and rectangles. The superimposition of the primary colours creates an effect of optical vibration. Mondrian radically renounces any curved or diagonal lines. His large-format composition covers the entire surface, so it is known as an all-over paint. However, this painting should be seen as a perception of New York. With its vibrant primary colours, and also with the rhythm of the lines, he recreates the geometrical organisation of the city, its electric lights and its joyful agitation. The painter knows the city well since he has been exiled there since 1940. By his abstract composition, by the strength of his rhythms and his great power of suggestion. New York City is a masterpiece of the 20th century.
For Jean-Baptiste Gouraud, Piet Mondrian strives to reduce his favourite themes to a few essential lines, both vertical and horizontal, which are for him the impassable avatar of form. The façade of a Parisian building, with its traces of past lives, gives him the opportunity for a virtuoso composition, at once totally abstract and perfectly identifiable. However, Mondrian is annoyed by the subtleties of his palette, which he considers still influenced by Impressionism, to the point of sticking for a while to almost monochrome tones. Seeing the sea, the sky and the stars,” he writes, “I represent them with a multitude of crosses. I was impressed by the grandeur of nature, and I tried to express at the same time expansion, rest and unity. “Then he gave up the sentimentality, according to him, of his too feverish touch to paint with pure flat tints, on light and plain backgrounds. At the end of the Great War, all curves were radically banished, and Mondrian still purified his palette. One can sense that he dreams of the perfect square, the suprematism dear to Malevitch is not far away. Whether it is a radical artistic approach, or a spiritual quest, a bit of both no doubt, in any case Mondrian pursues his search methodically, trying to harmonize, in his own words, the one extreme and the other. A few lines, just a few tones are enough to express the universal, since for Mondrian everything is in balance. Around a square or a rectangle gravitate other smaller forms, delimited by frank black bands, sometimes broken, in a composition that is always asymmetrical.
For nearly five years, Mondrian declined to the point of obsession, deepening this unique theme, which would have tired more than one painter. As Jean Baptiste Gouraud explains, an evolution is emerging, he abandons this central figure to make a horizontal and a vertical intersect, pushing the square towards the margin and thus offering a kind of escape from the frame. I know that this evolution, because of its subtlety, is not easy to grasp, but look at the famous Composition II in red, blue and yellow: a large square of a bright red occupies almost the entire space of the painting, seeming to extend progressively by pushing two yellow and blue rectangles at the edge, which one feels condemned to exile.
Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol
Mondrian’s influence was such that she inspired the fashion of the 1960s, among other things. This silkscreen work, created in 1962 by Pop Art artist Warhol, is one of the most famous works of the 20th century. It reproduces and multiplies the portrait of the American star Marilyn Monroe. How can an American star become a work of art? For Jean Baptiste Gouraud, this painting is a return to figurative art. Breaking with the abstract expressionism that dominated at the time, Warhol returns to an identifiable subject and above all known to all.
It is there a dominant of Pop Art. Marilyn Monroe, is then an icon of the American cinema, famous all over the world. She embodies a new ideal of beauty, arouses desire and identification. Coming from the world of advertising, the artist plays with the capitalist world and the consumer society of which he himself is the product. Through his industrial technique, reproducing the same photograph in series, he develops the idea of an art for all.
But art has to have a price, the artist has to have a price, and as Warhol says: “Earning money is an art, working is an art, and well-managed business is the greatest of the arts”, so the silkscreen portrait, even when multiplied, is only accessible at the price of a single work! The tragic death in 1962 of the Hollywood star touched the general public. Warhol then seized the myth. “Death really makes you look like a star,” he wrote. He declined his portrait to the envy, with the bright colors of advertising and animates it with excessive makeup to recall his legendary “sex appeal”. The tighter framing on the face reminds us of religious icons.
As Jean Baptiste Gouraud says, she is an icon of the consumer society. By its technical process of reproduction, by the hijacking of the subject, by the position of its author claiming to belong to the consumerist system, the serial portrait of Marilyn is an emblematic work of the second half of the 20th century. To be continued.
