Duchamp: The MacGyver of the Art World?

MacGyver, that dramatic character so memorably portrayed by Richard Dean Anderson, has achieved the cultural cult status of adding to the dictionary (or at least the popular lexicon) the terms "MacGyverism" and "MacGyver", the latter serving as either a noun or verb according to usage, with the noun serving as either subject or object.

"MacGyver", therefore, is literally synonymous with "ingenious improvisator" or "ingenious improvisation", evoking a sort of scientifically-sound magician who can seemingly pull devices and mechanical quick-fixes out of thin air. His enduring reputation and popularity is attested to in our present day culture by (among other things) the fact that a Mythbusters episode was dedicated to demonstrating that much of MacGyver's amazing looking "magic" would really work. As an example, check out the below Mythbusters mini-episode in which a 'MacGyver' is pulled to fix a blown-out fuse with a chewing gum wrapper.

Marcel Duchamp, not having been the star of a weekly television action series, may in some circles be less well known than MacGyver, but nonetheless Duchamp has a formidable reputation of his own, particularly in the Art World.

Now before I go any further, I should probably state that I am aware that the comparison I am going to draw between MacGyver and Duchamp may seem to some to be rather forced, and to others even bordering on sacriligious. There may be MacGyver purists and Duchamp devotees who will turn several shades of purple in their outrage at my bald-faced effrontery in daring to compare their two idols. (Each side having their own, likely incompatible, reasons for feeling so).

However, I would ask the Duchampians to bear in mind that Duchamp himself was in favor of "Challenging Taste" or even "Cultivating Indifferent Taste"; and surely that is what I am here doing in my own small way?

As for the MacGyver faction, I would ask them to consider the way in which engineers and techno-geeks have a tendency to view artists with no small measure of condescension. How many times, I wonder, in answer to the question "What's your major?", has some college student identified himself or herself as an ART major, only to be met with the jeering response, "Why don't you get a REAL major?" All too often the taunters are from such disciplines as engineering, although programming, business, and other "like-minded" fields also achieve sizeable representation among the philistines.

Here, amusingly enough, is where things actually start to get really interesting. Because, despite being so famed in the Art World, and so revered by many artists, Duchamp himself often seemed to be an ANTI-Artist. In fact, it would be hard to find anyone among any of the so-called "philistines" that I alluded to above who could even run a distant "second place" to Duchamp in terms of poking fun--and outright ridicule-- at Art, and p*ssing off (in a moment you'll see why that is a very appropriate turn of phrase) quite a few artists in the process. Don't believe me? Well, we might as well present Duchamp's perhaps most infamous example of subverting "all preconceived notions" of art, which was his work entitled "Fountain". Fountain was nothing more nor less than a URINAL that had been signed by Duchamp with one of his artistic pseudonyms, R. Mutt, and then submitted to an art exhibition. Bear in mind that this was 1917, and quite a few people, artists and otherwise, were shocked, displeased, etc by the fact that Duchamp had "MacGyvered" a sculpture "out of thin air" by simply setting his signature to a potty.

However, is it really appropriate to refer to Duchamp's so-called "Fountain" as a "MacGyver"? There may be those who resent this comparison of Duchamp's seeming cop-out to MacGyver's ingenious spur-of-the-moment improvisations. I will return to this question later**. We might first pause to consider a bit more deeply the whole MacGyver-esque tradition in entertainment and culture. Other examples of MacGyver-esque escapades in recent movies that come to my mind include quite a few stunts in Jackie Chan movies. For example, in one movie (Rush Hour, I think, although I'm not for sure), in order to get onboard a ship without swimming or splashing, Chan's character "MacGyvers" a boat by grabbing a large cardboard box, standing in it, and steadying himself by grabbing an overhead cable that connects the ship to the dock, "walking" himself hand over hand along the cable while balancing on his pasteboard boat. An example from another genre is in the movie "Apocalypto", when (warning: plot spoiler!) the protagonist, happening to find himself in dire straits indeed with the odds heavily against him, "MacGyvers" a blowgun barrel out of thin air at the last minute by rolling a large banana leaf into a tube and then shoots through the barrel darts which he had "MacGyvered" out of thorns and a very conveniently encountered poison dart frog.

Going back in time before movies were around as entertainment, an excellent example of a precursor or prototype of the "MacGyver" archetype would be a Jules Verne's creation by the name of Cyrus Harding, an intrepid engineer who, after being "Robinson Crusoed" on a Desert Island with a small group of castaways, proceeds to "MacGyver" in most amazing ways. Harding is able to measure distant cliffs with a stick and a shadow, determine the latitude and longitude of the island, and even, eventually, manufacture nitroglycerine, for crying out loud-- with very little besides the contents of the castaways' pockets, the clothes on their backs, the shoes on their feet, and the raw materials of the island and sea... oh yeah, and the stars in the sky for the longitude/latitude trick. Those things, plus the contents of his brain, which were--- well, encyclopedaic would be putting it mildly.

Cyrus Harding's desert island adventures occured in Verne's book "The Mysterious Island" which was set during and after the time of the American Civil War. This ties in with our theme in a rather interesting way, because after the Civil War, mass production and industrialization, continuing a process that had begun some time before, wrought with ever increasing rapidity a sweeping transformation of everyday life in America and the rest of the world. And in so doing, there was also a bit of a transformation in the nature of "MacGyverisms". This was because, as more and more items were available in commercially manufactured, mass produced form, it was easier and easier to find an item (such as, say, a chewing gum wrapper) that could be jury-rigged as a technological quick fix for something like a blown fuse. Or, to take an even more familiar example, suggested by the ingenious MacGyvered blowgun used in Apocalypto: I bet that as a result of mass production and industrialization there is not a single reader* who has not themselves at some point in their life MacGyvered a blowgun out of thin air by tearing one end of the paper wrapper around a drinking straw at a restaurant and shooting it at a victim across the table.

Industrialization...

Mass production...

Ever-increasing mechanization...

...all keys to understanding what it means to us to "MacGyver".

The plot thickens, ah, how it thickens! For industrialization, mass production, and ever-increasing mechanization are also key to explaining some of Duchamp's art-- and his ambivalence towards Art. Was Duchamp really trying to subvert Art's very foundations, to purge it from existence? Sometimes he certainly seems to have been.

But perhaps there is more to the story?

Now would probably be an opportune time to throw in some multi-media, and I believe you will, in a few more paragraphs, agree that nothing could be more appropriate to the discussion at hand than to paste in a couple of more Youtube videos to this growing "Hub-Collage".

You may hear Duchamp's ambivalence towards art expressed in his own words in this interview video.

Also, courtesy of DJ Spooky, hear some very well-articulated, thought-provoking insights into what made Duchamp tick as an artist... (or anti-artist?). DJ Spooky is an artist who uses musical sampling to comment on the tradition of what is known in the art world as "The Readymade".

"The Readymade" was a general term coined by Duchamp to describe and classify the kind of art of which his Fountain was an example. We may note that Fountain was not a completely random choice as a Readymade. After all, a urinal and a fountain share in common plumbing and moving water. They could both be said to exhibit lines of sculptural form. In a similar way, most people would get the joke/connection if we took our individually wrapped drinking straw and stuck it on the wall of a museum with a placard underneath entitled "Blowgun". They might not get a huge belly-laugh out of it, but they would get it.

However, some of Duchamp's Readymades were a bit more abstruse than Fountain. Duchamp's first Readymade, which he assembled in 1913, was a bicycle wheel in its fork mounted upside down on the seat of a stool. Here, perhaps the "joke" is a bit less obvious, a little less of a pun and a little more of a non sequitur, perhaps.

Now, If you are new to the "Readymade" as an item of art and art terminology, it may help to get a clearer picture of what is meant if you have ever made a collage.

Let's say, for instance, that you take a photo of a friend and a photo of King Kong climbing the Empire State Building, and using the art of collage you place your friend's head on top of King Kong's shoulders. You will have just created a sort of Readymade (and maybe a sore friend).  Often associated with the concept of the "Readymade" is the idea of the "Found Object": for example, the two "found" photos which you snipped and collaged together. 

Nowadays, of course,such things tend to take place in Photoshop on a computer screen. But many of us will remember when it was all done with Elmer's glue and those little round-nosed scissors. Anyhow, thanks to Photoshop and the myriad venues of digital cut-and-paste, now more than ever we are well-acquainted with visual expression in the form of Readymades. In fact, "photoshop" has come to be used as a verb in much the same way as "macgyver".

We may be said to live in a Post-industrial Age, so perhaps following a popular convention we could label many of the Readymades we see nowadays, and indeed take for granted, as Readymades 2.0. The erstwhile (?) Industrial Age helped give rise to Modernism, an art "movement" that you're probably familiar with at least in name. What has our post-industrial age helped give rise to? You will notice a certain pattern in the name of the movement that has succeeded Modernism: "Postmodernism".

And on that note I think I will take an intermission. I believe I had better rest, because I will certainly need my strength for the self-appointed job that lies ahead of me: delving into Modernism, and Postmodernism, and a few other formidable topics, all in hopes of somehow being able to prove that Duchamp is to MacGyver, as Diego de la Vega is to Zorro.

In other words, this hub is "to be continued". (The link to "Part Two" will be posted here when ready).

Meanwhile, I leave you with a few more words from Duchamp himself.