I still love, Duchamp - Nude Descending a Staircase

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naturalplastic
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08 May 2014, 6:25 pm

Its a great painting.

Calvin and Hobbs were not the first to use it in a joke.

The Smothers Brothers used on their Sixties TV variety show.

Dicky Smoothers brought a framed painting out on stage with its back to the audience and announced he was going to show "Nudist Descending a Staircase" to the TV audience. Tommy was shocked that he would dare show nudey picture on TV.

Tommy then steps downstage to where the Dicky is admiring the painting (still with the back of the frame to the audience who still cant see the actual painting). Suddenly Tommy's eyes bug out in fiened shock as he say "OMG! THATS THE MOST OBSCENE THING IVE EVER SEEN!". you're NOT gonna show THAT to the audience?

Finnally Dicky turns the picture around for the audience to see. The joke being that its revealed to be a cubeist painting far too abstract to be offensive despite its title.



Hopper
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08 May 2014, 7:07 pm

mezzanotte wrote:
The great thing about art is that each individual experiences a piece of artwork in their own way, so there is really no right or wrong interpretation. But if you want a good academic explanation about why art movements (Impressionists, Surrealists, Dadaists, etc.) are important and what made painters like Monet, Rosseau, Duchamp and others greats, I recommend a book by Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell .


I might just, thanks.

I do seem to have a block of some sort with static visual art. Music and film and writing exist in directed time. They have a span and flow, and I am variously able to engage with them, or draw out why I can't. But with art, much of the time, I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking at. I suppose if there's not something about the picture that immediately engages, I'm just left lost and floaty - just looking at a bunch of shapes and colours that does nothing for me. And I have no care for sculpture at all. I can be happily absorbed in contemplating a scene or topography or street furniture (how I love lamposts and telegraph poles and electric pylons!) or buildings or features thereof. But I've never seen a sculpture intended as such that I didn't have a clue as to what or how I should think of it.


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Of course, it's probably quite a bit more complicated than that.

You know sometimes, between the dames and the horses, I don't even know why I put my hat on.