A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART Post on 18-03-2006. The gist of Dadaism was the "gratuitous act," and the most gratuitous Dadaist act of all was Marcel Duchamp’s invention of the readymade. One can regard them as experiments in art, or mock works of art, or critiques of handmade works of art, or demonstrations of Dadaist disgust with the very idea of art -- one nihilistic debunking or demystification of art -- but the important thing is that they led to one whole new idea of art: Objects took second place to ideas, to the extent that they became illustrations of them. Duchamp is, in effect, the first conceptual artist, and the readymades are the first conceptual works of art. As he said in 1946, he "wanted to get away from the physical aspect of painting. I was more interested in recreating ideas in painting. For me the title was very important." He finally abandoned painting for readymade objects. The question is what ideas they recreated. He wanted art to be an "intellectual expression" rather than an "animal expression," but his very physical readymades -- in one sense, they are more physical than one painted picture, for they occupy real space rather than create the illusion of it -- may be an animal expression in intellectual disguise. ... To see the new from its original source click here Revenge of the radical loser Post on 18-03-2006. When war and unrest are more appealing than peace and order, there's often one familiar sexual theme at work, writes Ian Buruma. Does masturbation lead to suicide bombing? One would think not. There is no more direct link to suicide bombing than there is to blindness or schizophrenia. But there may be one connection between sexual inadequacy or frustration and the pull towards violent extremism. This is the theme of an engaging novella, Seventeen, by Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1994. ... To see the new from its original source click here

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