The Anti-Readymade

Marcel Duchamp, arguably the most influential artist of the 20th century, turned the art world upside down, in 1917, when he submitted a porcelain urinal as art for the inaugural Independent Artists’ exhibition in the Grand Central Palace of New York City.  “Fountain” signed by R Mutt was rejected, which only drove that readymade sculpture to define the dada movement.  

But wait…the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven more likely was its actual creator.  R Mutt, a/k/a Duchamp elbowed her out.  The Baroness embodied Dada, fought at the vanguard of the avant-garde to expose the irrationality of conformity and capitalism.  Jane Heap, a publisher active in the development of modernism, described the Baroness as “the only one living anywhere who dresses Dada, loves Dada, lives Dada.”  The Baroness Elsa appears to have been R Mutt.  

108 years later, when social media breeds conformity and capitalism reigns supreme, we are proud to present the Anti-Readymade: an object of exquisite natural beauty rendered into a utilitarian object of limited practical use.  A countertop in my new office.  

The slab is 2.25” thick American black walnut, which I happened to espie last December while at a lumberyard buying odd-lot flooring for our loft’s “charcuterie board” floor.  I was seized by its commanding poetry, and given that my corporate bank account had excess capital, a tax write off was available.  In our loft I had framed a wall using original boards from our 1840 barn, torn down when we first renovated the house.  Boards cut and milled in 1840 would have sprouted circa 1700, so the history here equals the poetry.  I sit here now as I write.  

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then consider this from my childrens’ eyes.  They remember when our loft was being framed, my son shoveled snow out the empty window openings.  Just before COVID a friend helped me hang sheetrock, so when the shutdown began my wife had a home office.  The nook wall is built of 325 year old boards, given a new life.  Friends have loaned tools, John Hart built a bookcase then helped inlay the bowtie joint, my son helped clean out the many divots and found a walnut!  The wild wood grain shouts out, and the hole speaks of the unknown where the “unusable” has been made beautiful in a community effort.  

And what about that hole at the center?  It screams of the void. Our zeitgeist, it seems, is a call to leap into the void.  Musashi, the 16th century Samurai Master and strategist, considered a “sword saint” in Japan, taught that one must “strike from the void.”  This means to strike using a calm, natural, intuitive approach, free of tension and over analysis.  When stillness and clarity coincide, the body and spirit are in harmony.  

And so our Anti-Readymade now stands ever ready, willing and able to remind us that stillness and clarity are keys to navigating these turbulent times.  

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Even the slab cutoffs are sculptural. When squaring the slab’s end, this piece was cut off, which sings of Brancusi. It will become yet another piece in our mix-it-up loft.