The Creative Act

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) was one of the few artists of the 20^th century to renew the postulates and possibilities of visual arts. His ideas, explained on the Creative Act, provides the basis for today’s contemporary art creative freedom, and introduces the concept that the act of creation is the result of the artist and the spectator.

For instance, Duchamp considers that the artist creates out of a state of consciousness, like a medium that elucidates and connects with time and space. A human being who creates based on intuition, in opposition to a rational, self-controlled state of mind.  To illustrate his idea, Duchamp cites TS Eliot’s essay: “The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates”.

According to Duchamp, there is no artist discourse or rational explanation of his/her oeuvre, which will validate it. The importance of a creative act will remain within the public recognition of the artist as a social and cultural producer and his ulterior inclusion into the Art History.

He also makes a distinction among Art, described as a bad or good, Art Coefficient as the non-conscious, subjective, steps and struggles that an artist must overcome to produce raw art, and personal Art Coefficient, which is the difference between the artist’s intentions and the final product.  Moreover, the Art Coefficient is a raw, personal expression of art that must be processed and completed by the spectator. There is the spectator, who decides the esthetic importance of the artwork.

To conclude, Duchamp was mainly concerned with the intellectual aspects of art and not with the physicality of an artwork. He believed that art was an intellectual process, free from traditional constrains and predominant rules. His anti-art objects and intellectual ideas established the basis for future art movements, for example, abstract expressionism, pop art, happenings and conceptual art, as well as participative art.