How can a banal object move from the status of an utilitary object to an artwork, namely an artefact which has been produced to render a service, in the same way as a masterpiece or a genius’ work of art ? More simply, how can an utensil become an artwork ?

A priori an artwork has never been produced for any other purpose than the one of existing for what it is. It is useless in the sense that it does not allow to facilitate or perform a task, it does not provide a material service. But in the moral sense from a philosphical point of view, the artwork matters to respond to a mental expectation, a spiritual desire : the one of lifting the soul, eclipsing the triviality of everyday concerns, and arouse an aesthetic emotion. Therefore, the experience of a poem, an opera, a movie, an architecture or an artistic performance, can enable a sense of satisfaction or pleasure provided both by knowledge and emotion. Thus, artworks are objects of the mind. (NB : French law rightly qualifies them as « works of the mind »).

In the case of Fountain by Marcel Duchamp or of any other ready made, it is obvious that there are no qualities of form, style, rarity, originality, preciosity… or of technique which make it an artwork. The object in itself, its utensility, fall within the most shared banality. The artistry of this work of art doesn’t manifest itself by the vision only, or by any tangibility. It doesn’t have any obviousness that can be revealed by the constatation of an intrinsic nature, of signs of belonging to a genre, or of essential properties and qualities, but rather requires to be detected after an autoreflexive and introspective development, inevitably starting from the following interrogation. « How this mass-produced urinal can be included in the field of art ? » Any object (or arrangement of objects) presented by its author, made especially or appropriated from its primary function, can grant the status of artwork, or is likely to be elevated to the rank of artwork, provided that we acknowledge the power – as original as possible – to trigger the emotional reaction of pleasure by surprise, critique, interrogation, admiration … , by the experience that it gives.

If we split the art history into three successive paradigms, classic, modern and contemporary, each of them involves a definition different from art. In classic paradigm, art forces itself in a conformity with norms inherited from the tradition. In modern paradigm, art wants to report the interiority of the artist and its diet of peculiarity, which sometimes supposes the transgression of the classic norms. In paradigm contemporary, art consists in exceeding the limits of what is collectively admitted as of art. The esthetic experience is not the same for each of paradigms. When the classic aimed at the spiritual rise, and the modern at the esthetic emotion, contemporary art looks for more the sensation. Several authors strive to demonstrate in a multidisciplinary book¹, that it is not the esthetic established value from the beautiful or from the ugly that dominates as well in the creation as in the reception of the artworks. Authenticity, autonomy, celebrity, high price, emotion, experience, way, morality, sustainability, pleasure, originality, rarity, responsibility, sensorialité, significance, spirituality, work, uniqueness, universality, truth, virtuosity … can matter as much as the esthetic attraction. According to Jean-Pierre Cometti², the artwork does not possess intrinsic qualities but exists and defines itself through social, institutional and material factors. From then on, it is by the pragmatic approach which opposes in a fetishistic consideration of the artwork that we can make the experience.

      If we should formulate only two elementary, necessary and sufficient qualities of the piece of art and of its cerebral utility, it could be to generate at least the « fascination » and the « revelation ».

(This note has been translated from French by Laetitia Fuzeaux / L2 CR.)

___________Notes_____________________________________________________

1. Heinich N., Schaeffer J.-M., Talon-Hugon C., Par-delà le beau et le laid. Enquêtes sur les valeurs de l’art, presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014,
   
2. Cometti J.P., Art et Facteurs d’art. Ontologies friables, « Aesthetica », Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012.

 

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