"3 Standard Stoppages," Marcel Duchamp - History, Art Video Lecture

(drums)
Ann: Marcel Duchamp had
been trained as a painter.
He was a very capable painter in
the impressionists style.
A very terrific painter
in the cubists style.
At the end of 1912, Duchamp decided,
"Painting is dead. I'm going
to turn to different things."
1913 was the year that Duchamp
made his first ready made
by putting an ordinary
store bought bicycle wheel
atop an ordinary store
bought kitchen stool.
What Duchamp said is, "It
is my power of choice."
"It is my deed of making a selection
that makes a work, a work of art."
And one of the things that he did in 1913
was re-imagine how long a meter could be.
He did so with the work of art behind me
called, 'The Standard Stoppages'.
He called The Standard
Stoppages a ready made
because it was a ready made idea
that a meter is a given thing.
So, he was making a new meter.
It was just a Duchampian meter
and here's how he made it.
He decided to cut three
threads, a meter in length,
and then to stand with the three threads
a meter above three canvases.
He then proceeded to drop each thread
to the canvas below and he
fixed each of the threads
on the canvas. Cut down
the canvas into a rectangle
and pronounced these the new standard.
It was a work that was
beautiful in it's concept.
If you're going to make a new meter stick
you should use it, right?
It shouldn't just be an abstract tool
that you have sitting around.
The way Duchamp decided to
put The Standard Stoppage
he made to use was on an old painting
that he had made several
years ago and abandoned.
Tracing with his
templates that he had made
from the way the threads
fell on the canvases,
these very beautiful curvy shapes
to grow, kind of like, this weird coral,
calling the picture,
'Network of Stoppages'.
Duchamp remains, 100 years later,
one of the most daring
challengers of ideas
that a century on, we
still hold pretty dear
about what a work of art could be.
(bells ringing)