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The Temple of Duchamp

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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 exhib
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Form is process

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                                             Paul Cezanne                                              Portrait of Ambroise Vollard  1899 If it seems to us today that changes in society happen quickly and unexpectedly, perhaps we ignore (or are unaware of) the stream of events that lead to those changes or “tipping points” as Malcolm Gladwell described them. Individually we often focus on destinations, solutions or targets; our “conscious” minds judge what is relevant or influential and overlook or disregard "everyday" moments or experiences which, in themselves, lack significance.  What might be described as atomistic thinking sees these moments as forms that appear, then fade and disappear - which they do - to the “conscious” mind.  However, this overlooks their relational potential, either in a straight additive, cumulative sense or as events that mark a tiny shift in perception or state, or as elements that combine to create unexpected or unpredictable "f
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T'um

Executed in 1918, T'um is Marcel Duchamp’s last painting on canvas.  text from Yale University art gallery - “Tu m’ was commissioned by artist, collector, and educator Katherine Dreier to be hung over a bookcase in her library, hence the unusual length and frieze-like shape of the work… The title lends a sarcastic tone to the work, for the words, perhaps short for the French “tu m’emmerdes” (you annoy me) or “tu m’ennuies” (you bore me), seem to express his attitude toward painting as he was casting it aside”. T’um is Duchamp’s critique of painting but its elements are presented in a linear manner, using images as words. The format of the painting is akin to Monet’s Nympheas in the Jeu de Pomme in Paris, but unlike Monet, Duchamp requires one to “read” the picture from left to right ,as one would read the library books stored below. It does not permit the act of holistic, delocalised perception with which we see the world (and Monet’s Nympheas) and subsequen
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