Mick Hartley

I read somewhere a few years back that conceptual art is like jokes without the humour. I was reminded of this at the latest Tate Modern blockbuster, “Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia: The Moment Art Changed Forever”.

If it wasn’t for Duchamp’s urinal, this would be a minor exhibition of three artists who happened to be friends, and who produced some mildly interesting work in the early years of the 20th Century, but were better known for the social milieu they inhabited – which included most of the major figures of Dada and, later, Surrealism – than for their original contributions. Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase” (1912) is a kind of extreme Cubism. Man Ray is probably best remembered as a photographic pioneer. Picabia….well, there’s some decent enough work here that I wasn’t familiar with, but nothing particularly outstanding.

From the exhibition guide:

Duchamp and Picabia first met in Paris in 1911. They shared an irreverent and anarchistic attitude towards life and art, and quickly became friends. They went to New York in 1915 and got to know Man Ray, who was also searching for an individual form of expression. Together the three men helped to create the Dada movements in New York and, later, Paris, and remained friends throughout their lives.

Although the three men followed their own paths and at times were geographically widely separated, they enjoyed a special affinity. They socialised together, discussed ideas and collaborated on art works and publications. They also responded to each other’s interests with wit and a sense of fun.

Wit and a sense of fun. Which is really what’s missing from this show – and to the whole way that Duchamp et al have come to be honoured.

Let’s cut to the chase: the heart of the exhibition. The guide takes up the story:

Duchamp set himself the challenge of making art works that were not works of art, as traditionally understood.

He decided that an art work did not need to be either visually appealing or even made by the artist. Accordingly, he chose a number of ‘readymade’ objects, of no aesthetic merit, and gave them the usual attributes of a work of art: a title, a named author, a date of execution, and a viewing public or owner. His Fountain – an ordinary urinal laid on its back – was rejected from an exhibition in 1917. This, and more importantly, the ensuing debate about what constitutes a work of art, is now seen as a turning point in the history of modernism.

Well yes, but isn’t there something missing from this account? Something hinted at by the nature of the object chosen? That he was, you know,….taking the piss. That there was an element of, ahem, humour in this.

You won’t find humour here, though. No institution outside of a mosque has so thoroughly banished humour as the modern art gallery.

As stated in the guide, the usual significance of the urinal is presented by the art establishment as opening the debate on “what constitutes a work of art”, and the self-serving conclusion usually drawn is that – hooray! – there are really no criteria beyond what the artist decides is art. This, as sure as an unmade bed is an unmade bed, has led to the current proliferation of rubbish, and to the “cult of the artist“: if you’ve no criteria to judge by, then a work gains significance simply by having been produced by an artist, just as a cult object gains significance through having been associated with a cult leader. The other side of this – that if art is whatever you want it to be, then it’s nothing at all, and we can abandon the whole charade – is somehow forgotten, though it could be argued that this is more what Duchamp had in mind, especially given his subsequent abandonment of art in favour of playing chess.

Duchamp’s other main claim to fame is the Mona Lisa with the moustache. Oh yes. It “epitomises the iconoclasm of the Dada era”. He paints a moustache on the Mona Lisa, and scrawls LHOOQ on it, which sounds – quelle hilarité! – like “elle a chaud au cul“, or “she has a hot arse“. Only in France, one is tempted to think, and only by art historians, could such a conceit be deemed to be of such profound significance.

Imagine the Benny Hill exhibition. “With his exaggerated depiction of male lust, Hill slyly subverts our notions of what it is to be a man, and makes us question our preconceived notions of gender. The speeded-up action as the grotesque male chases scantily-clad females across the English countryside – a trope originally constructed in the appropriation of land by the wealthy for their aristocratic pleasures, and now reduced in Hill’s subversive vision to a playground of rampant libido – deliberately emphasises the mechanical and stereotypical notion of sexual pursuit as conceived by the dominant patriarchal ideology, and draws our attention to what had previously been hidden in the relationship between sexes, and, of course, between classes.”

And it’s about as funny as drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa.

The last galleries chronicle the later years of our chums. Man Ray photographed a lot of female nudes. It was always one of his favourite things, and who can blame him. Picabia painted a series of, as the guide puts it, “what appeared to be kitsch paintings of nudes”. These were copied from, um, gentlemen’s magazines. As for Duchamp, well, there’s Etant donnés, an installation described as a “disturbing piece”. As it is, in a way. You go into a room, look through a peephole, and see the lower part of a woman’s body, legs spread, shaved pudenda pointing towards you. And that’s it. As the blurb has it, this is a “culmination of Duchamp’s lifelong interest in eroticism and perception”. Ah yes. A lot of people nowadays spend much of their time on the internet exploring their lifelong interest in eroticism and perception.

So….they all turned into dirty old men. Well, nothing wrong with that – some of my best friends are dirty old men – but it’s a less than inspiring end to the show. And, to be honest, it’s a less than inspiring show.