james dill history of contemporary and modern art ......james dill history of contemporary and...
TRANSCRIPT
James Dill
History of Contemporary and Modern Art
Professor Joseph McPartlin
03/06/2018
Formal Analysis Essay
Marcel Duchamp’s Fresh Widow, a miniaturized replica of robin’s egg blue French
window with black leather shrouding it’s once revealing glass, is as much an exemplary nod to
the fundamentals of Dada as it is to Duchamp’s signature claims of what qualifies as art through
the re-representation of everyday modernity. At first glance, Duchamp’s Fresh Widow holds mere
aesthetic and decorative value through the eyes of the ordinary spectator. However, as one
scrutinizes the piece through the lens of the given title, the shrouded meaning and contradictions
begin to reveal itself, similarly to the very cracking of the black leather concealing the
transparency of the world. This masking of society alluded through the piece may in fact be an
expression of the widow’s concealment of her very own inner grieve and sadness, the type of
overwhelming melancholy that is capable of obstructing the outside from peering in as well as
the inside looking out. The deeper symbolism hidden within and beyond the Fresh Widow’s
hauntingly innocent facade is carried harmoniously yet antithetically throughout it’s formalities
and aesthetics, reinforcing the piece expressionistically and formally.
Superficially static and structured, the hauntingly innocent composition of Fresh Widow
exudes a sense of encompassing stability while lines and edges are but the very essence of the
facade. Strict rigidity and machine-like manufacturing is evoked through the methodical
symmetry of the window pane’s grid-like pattern formed by the intersecting wood trimming and
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parallel squares. But it is the very relationship between color, that of the soft, faded robin’s egg
blue and crisp black, that the stability of the piece begins to slip into a state of dissonance. The
harmony embodied within the structural elements turns on itself when innocence meets death.
This state of antithesis is where the piece’s inner expression lies, arousing the chaotic disarray in
which the widow has experienced.
The dichotomy of color exposed within the formalities of Fresh Widow’s facade, is
equally found within the textures of the piece, whose qualities are in a conflicting waltz of there
own. The faded softness and delicate beauty of the wood trimming evokes a nature of
timelessness, while the grain yet smoothness of the leather, whose crisp black surface has begun
to crack with age, holds ephemeral value. This sense of change over time is tied directly into the
conceptual narrative of the piece. The widow’s wall of intensifying grief and emotional
suppression will soon begin to fracture with time, slowly chipping away at the internal facade in
hopes of revealing the world beyond that of her own stream of thought once again.
This conflicting balance of harmony and dissonance is parallel to the spacial relationship
between the piece and the spectator. Occupying both the two dimensional and three dimensional
world, the piece is yet again in a state of limbo. As a physical and material object, the French
windows occupy the three dimensional space of the glass encasement, while illusionistically
invading a space of two dimensional flatness through its ability to hide the world, whether that
be inside or outside, from the spectator. Additionally, due to the reflecting quality of the
encasement, the spectator is able to identify themselves in the space of the gallery. This thus
creates an interesting, possibly unintended perspective for the spectator, whose understanding of
the piece as an object of transparency is contradicted by a layer of shrouding flatness, and doubly
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contradicted by its versatility to propel one’s own space back onto one’s self. This same sense of
reflexivity is tied into the grieving narrative of the widow, whose inner chaotic emotional state
and subconsciousness is reflected outward into space and deflected back upon herself.
Spacial contradiction is equally in play with that of the proportions of the Fresh Widow
and the gallery space itself. Modeled down to a much smaller scale than that of the typical
French window found adorning Bourgeoisie interiors, the piece not only loses it’s original
context, but becomes engulfed by the gallery, alluding to increasingly shrunken proportions.
However, this very decontextualized miniaturization of size is in harmonious dialogue with the
expressionistic elements of the piece, representing the minuscule scale in which the widow may
perceive the world through her eyes of grieve and despair.
Through the decontextualization of the everyday through claims of artistic value, the
Fresh Widow is the archetypal paradigm of the essential essences of the Dada movement.
Coming to age at the climax of WWI, Dada was the epitome of wiping the slate clean, of
destroying traditions and the established norms and practices of the past, while truly forging
onward into the future of modernity with a mindset riddled with subversive rebuttal against
anything accepted. The Dada artists, in particular Marcel Duchamp, questioned conventionalities
of what art could be through unorthodox methods and materials, such as the re-presentation of
the everyday common good, as presented through Fresh Widow’s decontextualized facade of
deception. Like the society in which they were critiquing, Dada was brimming with
contradictions, working and inhabiting the world they have come to critique and reject, while
turning it over onto itself, ultimately disrupting the narrative in which it spreads.
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Like the very fundamentals of Dada, Marcel Duchamp’s Fresh Widow is entranced by
parallels and discrepancies, in a perpetual dialogue between itself, it’s original context, and
spacial relationship with the spectator. Through initial analysis, the purity of the piece’s form is
muddled in an ominous atmosphere of obscurity and caliginosity, forcing the spectator into a
trance of hypnotic analysis through a vortex of back and forth contradictions of where the very
truth of the piece lies. Scummily riddled with deception, Fresh Widow’s formalities and
aesthetics are interconnected through fluctuating unmelodious contradictions, revealing the very
spirit of the piece. Like that of the widow, It is within this maze of dissonant variances that the
spectator must begin to chip away at the ambiguity in order to reveal the clarity on other side.
Marcel Duchamp, Fresh Widow 1920 Miniature French Window, painted wood frame, and panes of glass covered with black leather
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