Went to the AGNSW today to see the Duchamps exhibition. I have always loved hat rack, and learnt about the Dadaists back at university when i was studying french. it was interesting to see his early paintings (see portrait of his father below, all green and beautiful). there was a lot of document-like book-like objects. the doco for his Bride Stripped Bare piece was an interesting “archival” looking art piece, all the notes he made and took. He then duplicated them, and made jigs so the torn pieces of paper were all identical – an interesting mix of “random” things but incredibly controlled.The overarching emotion i felt was that it felt undergraduate. i had to remind myself that 100 years before it was ground breaking – he was working in the 1920s, and it’s now nearly 2020, so i have to go easy on it. a few days later i went to a community art exhibition and saw similar works there – the naif thing that was by no means pretend, like duchamps was.
also popped in to see some works in the national. The Sandra Selig piece gave me ideas on what I might do with my world book encyclopedia pages, but that’s for another day. And of course as someone who collects photos of chairs, it was nice to see the Rushdi Anwar piece with the chairs.
by the by, at the community art exhibition i saw someone had made a ppt presentation / video of abandoned chairs in the streets, along with maps showing where the chairs were left. So it’s not just me!
