“Mind Over Matter: Understanding Modern Art”
(Junction City Arts Council Arts Page Column for Sunday, March 9, 2008)
by Emily Vieyra

Defending a signed urinal as fine art, Marcel Duchamp retorted that “[t]he only works of Art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.” In fact, the French-born Modernist painter had staged this artwork submission for the American Society of Independent Artists' annual exhibition in 1917 to test how open-minded his colleagues on the gallery hanging committee were. (They weren't.) Although the nonjuried show guidelines promised a spot to any artist who paid the six-dollar entry fee,
the urinal entitled Fountain (mounted so as to be viewed from above) provoked such outrage and disgust that the committee refused to exhibit the piece.
Duchamp wasn't just being silly and cynical and Eurocentric. He truly believed that art is a product of the mind, not simply a work of the hands. A painter in his own right, Duchamp could render volumetric forms as well as the next Modernist. But Duchamp valued the intellectual pursuit of artmaking over the physical skills required to make it. It didn't matter that he purchased the urinal from a store instead of crafting it himself; what mattered, he claimed, was that he invented a new way of seeing it—in this case, as a fountain, a source, rather than a receptacle—so that “its useful significance disappeared under the new...point of view.”
If infusing purity and superimposing aesthetic beauty onto a toilet isn't optimism, I don't know what is.
We know that the initial decades of the twentieth century saw fundamental changes to the ways people lived and worked. During the Modernist period, which dates from the start of the twentieth century until the beginning of World War II, artists challenged their audiences to define “art,” with such readymade pieces as Fountain, as well as abstract expressionist, cubist, and surrealist work from the likes of Kandinsky, Picasso, Dali, and Kahlo (to name but a few Modernist movements and creators).
But Modernist artists, even though their innovative expressions were wildly different, shared common beliefs about art and the world. Namely, the belief that art could change the world, that art could change people's perceptions, start revolutions, create lasting social reform.
Today we scoff at Duchamp's belief that an artist could “create a new thought” for a piece of plumbing and thereby transform it into an object of admiration and purity, outside the realm of ordinary life. We may even dismiss Modernists as naïve. Since the 1970s, the Postmodernist art world and its creators don't generally share the Modernists' faith in the purity of art or the progress of human civilization. Artists often communicate uncertainty about art's ability to influence human behavior or the course of world events. A self-referent photograph from Welsh artist Kenneth Arnatt epitomizes the disillusionment and self-consciousness of the Postmodern sensibility. Around his neck, Arnatt hangs a large sign, which proclaims “I AM A REAL ARTIST.”
Why, does it matter?

IN THE GALLERY
For Youth Art Month, several students of Junction City and Fort Riley Middle Schools display their artwork in the gallery through the month of March.
The JCAC Art Gallery, located at 107 W. Seventh Street, is open Tuesday through Saturday.

IN THE STUDIO
In teams, Emerging Artists classes experimented with blending colors and shapes in large collaborative panel paintings for “Henri Matisse I & II.” True to the goals of the mature Matisse, we focused on painting scenes of energy and vitality, as well as achieving harmony among different ideas. The students also painted individual tiles that communicated the joy of a favorite activity or place, employing the visual intensity of pure primary colors.
Emerging Artists class registration is ongoing; 4-5:30pm classes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays are for K-2nd grade and 3rd-5th grade respectively.
The Painters' Studio Group is open to any painter aged 14 to adult, regardless of experience or skill level. Bring your sketches, paints, brushes and canvas; easels are provided. The group meets on Mondays from 3pm until 6pm at the Junction City Art Studio, located at 109 West Seventh.
Contact Studio Coordinator Emily Vieyra at 762-2581 for more information on upcoming class and workshop offerings.