The Temple of Duchamp

It struck me how the experience of seeing Duchamp's Fountain in the Tate Modern seemed familiar in some ways. I worked as a technician/picture hanger at the Tate many years ago and enjoyed watching the curators arranging works of art in the galleries for exhibition prior to hanging; essentially, organising the visitors experience of seeing, using the form and content of the artworks but also the elements of space, light and time. When we visit a museum or gallery, we are subliminally guided around the exhibition by a seamless combination of art, architecture and psychology.
In our everyday lives, we delight in encountering pleasant surprises; beauty is somehow more beautiful when it is unexpectedly revealed, light is brighter when it follows relative darkness, an expanse of space at the top of a narrow stairway seems more expansive.
Drama can be created when a work of art is initially seen from a distance and is approached gradually.  Vistas are very important in exhibition design and major / key works are often placed directly facing the line of approach (some distance away) to draw one in and create a presence. Even if we are not familiar with the work of art we subconsciously sense it must be significant - particularly if there is symmetry in the architectural context. Symmetry is power.  As we move nearer to the work and it occupies more of our field of vision, our sight of it becomes more of a regard until we finally behold it.

Our perceptions are being very subtly manipulated; this is the ancient architectural language reserved for gods and kings; the temple, the church and the throne room - and we respond to it.

We first see Fountain from a distance, in a case, akin to a reliquary, bathed in light streaming from above. Our approach becomes a processional walkway, passing through square arched anterooms lined with related, significant, but subordinate, works by others.  At last we enter the sanctuary and are in the presence of the icon itself, which is centred in the room, so we can circumambulate. To the right is a mixed media display of interpretative information presented on shelves on two walls in a corner of the room, akin to an iconostatis or the open pages of a large book - the shelves are lines on the page. These are texts, illuminated with video and more items in cases that speak of the mystery of non-materiality and its incarnation into form.

How Duchamp's indifference became faith and his subversion a gospel is another blog, but unsurprisingly, the art world clergy are heavily involved…