Objects and objectivity
Readymade themes and objects in the Post-War era


'EVERYTHING MADE SINCE DUCHAMP,' declared Gerhard Richter, 'has been a readymade, even when hand-painted' (H.-U. Obrist (ed.), Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting.Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, London, 1995, p. 101).

Beginning with his 1917 presentation of a signed urinal entitled Fountain, Duchamp managed to throw the entire nature of art, of its links to the real world, and of the flawed role of the artist into question, and those questions still provide hurdles and springboards for artists to this day. Still arguably the most recognised of Duchamp's later heirs was Andy Warhol, whose Pop images took the logos and clutter of everyday life in an everyman's America and recycled them, creating art.

In Dollar Sign, the endemic financial symbol has been revitalised and reincarnated in bold colours reminiscent of the disco era. The logo itself is the readymade, but placed on canvas it becomes art. At the same time, Dollar Sign provides an entertainingly flagrant commentary on the economics of art, an extension of Warhol's glib comment that 'I like money on the wall. Say you were going to buy a $200,000 painting. I think you should take that money, tie it up, and hang it on the wall. Then when someone visited you, the first thing they would see is the money on the wall' (Warhol, quoted in D. Bourdon, Warhol, New York, 1995, p. 384).

For Richter, whose early Pop works were based on photographs that he rendered into oils, the concept of the readymade was heavily interlinked with the actions of the artist himself. His abstract paintings provide a significant foil to those photograph works while also managing to critique and investigate the role of the painter in a Duchampian manner. The smears across the canvas of Abstraktes Bild, executed in 1991, speak not of the frenzied outpourings of some of the American Abstract Expressionists, but are instead beautiful colouristic traps that lure the viewer into a false sense of security: Richter has almost clinically assembled the colours and paints, maintaining a cool distance from the work yet provoking admiration and aesthetic appreciation in his viewer, manipulating and exploiting our reactions.

They induce, 'pleasure without remorse. Because with this intellectual, conceptual background, you would always have an excuse. They are colourful and painterly but they are also very intellectual. Be careful!' (Richter, quoted in R. Storr (ed.), Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting, New York, 2002, p. 287)

The irony and analysis of Richter and Warhol forms a contrast to the readymade elements that feature in Jean Dubuffet's works, joyous celebrations of life that remain resolutely devoid of cynicism. In his 1954 sculpture Torse d'athlète, Dubuffet has taken volcanic rock and only slightly modified it in order to create the figure of a man, with facial features apparent as well.

Nature and chance have contributed as much as Dubuffet to this enchanting sculpture, a fragile, comical and whimsical shard of life. The porous appearance of the rock, which Dubuffet found in Auvergne, adds a sense of vulnerability that heightens the artist's carpe diem enthusiasm and encouragement in the face of mortality, making all the more appropriate the title given to the series of sculptures to which Torse d'athlète belongs: Petites statues de la vie precaire.


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