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Kant after Duchamp
Kant after Duchamp brings together eight essays around a central thesis with many implications for the history of avant-gardes. Although Duchamp's ready mades broke with all previously known styles, de Duve observes that he made the logic of modernist art practice the subject matter of his work, a shift in aesthetic judgment that replaced the classical "this is beautiful" with "this is art." De Duve employs this shift (replacing the word "beauty" by the word "art") in a rereading of Kant's Critique of Judgment that reveals the hidden links between the radical experiments of Duchamp and the Dadaists and mainstream pictorial modernism.
504 pages, Paperback
First published May 10, 1996
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373 people want to read
About the author
Thierry de Duve
55 books25 followersThierry de Duve, son of Nobel Prize-winning cytologist and biochemist Christian de Duve, is a Belgian scholar of the history and theory of modern and contemporary art. He is a scholar of Immanuel Kant and has written several books on the artist Marcel Duchamp, including: Pictorial Nominalism; On Marcel Duchamp's Passage from Painting to the Readymade (1991), The Definitively Unfinished Marcel Duchamp (1993), and Kant After Duchamp (1998). Committed to a reinterpretation of modernism, much of his earlier work revolves around the challenges presented in Marcel Duchamp's readymades and their and implications for aesthetics. Thierry de Duve outlines an aesthetic theory of art to meet the requirements of our time, which mainly consists of three components: 1.) updating Kant's aesthetics by replacing the phrase "this is beautiful" with "this is art" as the paradigm for aesthetic judgment; 2.) reassessing Modernism in painting from Manet onwards with theory informed by Clement Greenberg, while at the same time acknowledging its failure; 3.) reflecting on the historical evolution of Fine Arts from the primacy of painting as a specific privileged avenue for art production to the general "art at large" espoused by later theorists and practitioners of contemporary art.
For Thierry de Duve there is no difference between modern, post-modern and contemporary art: the same logic rules from the beginning. Art has no essence; it is simply what we call by that name. Borrowing from Lacanian identity theory, Duve argues that the human brain develops prematurely, and the drive to create and consume art arises from neotenous desires that condition all humans. Thus for him, the enterprise of art remains utterly tragic: accounting for and responding to messianic desires of how life should be while at the same time informed by a postmodern weariness of modernism's naivety and inevitable failure.
With his colleague Jean Guiraud he co-founded the free institute of Fine Art, École de Recherche Graphique (ERG), in Brussels, 1972. He curated the Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2003. He has been a visiting professor at: the University of Lille III (France), the Sorbonne (France), MIT, and Johns Hopkins University, and was the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Distinguished Visiting Professor in Contemporary Art in Penn's History of Art Department. He was a fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In 2000, he curated the exhibition "Here - 100 years of contemporary art," at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
For Thierry de Duve there is no difference between modern, post-modern and contemporary art: the same logic rules from the beginning. Art has no essence; it is simply what we call by that name. Borrowing from Lacanian identity theory, Duve argues that the human brain develops prematurely, and the drive to create and consume art arises from neotenous desires that condition all humans. Thus for him, the enterprise of art remains utterly tragic: accounting for and responding to messianic desires of how life should be while at the same time informed by a postmodern weariness of modernism's naivety and inevitable failure.
With his colleague Jean Guiraud he co-founded the free institute of Fine Art, École de Recherche Graphique (ERG), in Brussels, 1972. He curated the Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2003. He has been a visiting professor at: the University of Lille III (France), the Sorbonne (France), MIT, and Johns Hopkins University, and was the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Distinguished Visiting Professor in Contemporary Art in Penn's History of Art Department. He was a fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In 2000, he curated the exhibition "Here - 100 years of contemporary art," at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 13, 2008
The most interesting single book on modern art.
February 17, 2013
Best secondary text on Kant's 'Critique of Judgement' I've read.
July 8, 2021
Everyone agrees art is about creating, using one’s chosen medium. In painting, medium consists of tubes (or buckets) of paint and support (canvas, wood, board, etc.). Along comes Marcel Duchamp, a Frenchman armed with a urinal. He upset every artist’s paint cart. Duchamp’s urinal is at the heart of Kant After Duchamp.
Kant After Duchamp is written by another Frenchman, a long-winded one. Thierry de Duve writes in a deceptively semi-conversational style. But, you can’t rush through the book. It is dense with ideas.
In the first section alone, Art Was A Proper Name, de Duve goes ad infinitum into the nuances of art along with why it is what it is. I hair-split, too, but never to this extent. I think that excess lies in the purview of philosophers who think through questions logically, without messing with reality. In fairness, de Duve does do some reality-checking.
At the center of the issues de Duve raises is the confounding story of Marcel Duchamp ‘s urinal aka Fountain by R. Mutt. A curious intrigue surrounded this urinal. No other piece of work has caused as much consternation. For at least one very good reason. Technically, Duchamp did not create it. Is not art all about creating?
Duchamp took an object we all know—a ready-made, as we now label this sort of thing—turned it upside down, and slapped on a title. He attributed it to an unknown, R. Mutt, and submitted it to an exhibit ran by the Society of Independents.
When the exhibit opened, Duchamp’s urinal was not in it. It had mysteriously disappeared from the Society’s safekeeping. Where to and taken by whom? No one knew or would say.
Alfred Stieglitz, at the time the leading figure in the art world, took up his cause by publicizing a photograph Stieglitz had taken of the urinal. R. Mutt’s Fountain gained notoriety. And as time passed, a coveted place in history.
There is more to this book, of course, but the saga of Duchamp’s infamous urinal illustrates the changing nature of art. His behind-the-scenes machinations offer an interesting look into the politics of artistic success. Is there a lesson in all this for writers?
Kant After Duchamp is written by another Frenchman, a long-winded one. Thierry de Duve writes in a deceptively semi-conversational style. But, you can’t rush through the book. It is dense with ideas.
In the first section alone, Art Was A Proper Name, de Duve goes ad infinitum into the nuances of art along with why it is what it is. I hair-split, too, but never to this extent. I think that excess lies in the purview of philosophers who think through questions logically, without messing with reality. In fairness, de Duve does do some reality-checking.
At the center of the issues de Duve raises is the confounding story of Marcel Duchamp ‘s urinal aka Fountain by R. Mutt. A curious intrigue surrounded this urinal. No other piece of work has caused as much consternation. For at least one very good reason. Technically, Duchamp did not create it. Is not art all about creating?
Duchamp took an object we all know—a ready-made, as we now label this sort of thing—turned it upside down, and slapped on a title. He attributed it to an unknown, R. Mutt, and submitted it to an exhibit ran by the Society of Independents.
When the exhibit opened, Duchamp’s urinal was not in it. It had mysteriously disappeared from the Society’s safekeeping. Where to and taken by whom? No one knew or would say.
Alfred Stieglitz, at the time the leading figure in the art world, took up his cause by publicizing a photograph Stieglitz had taken of the urinal. R. Mutt’s Fountain gained notoriety. And as time passed, a coveted place in history.
There is more to this book, of course, but the saga of Duchamp’s infamous urinal illustrates the changing nature of art. His behind-the-scenes machinations offer an interesting look into the politics of artistic success. Is there a lesson in all this for writers?
February 8, 2020
Kant After Duchamp offers an overview of the evolution of art and art theory in the 20th Century where the production of art comes readymade and the creative act takes a linguistic turn from what is beautiful to what is art.
De Duve makes a powerful argument that we can locate that turn in Kant's deduction of taste, where the condition of the possibility of judgement of beauty is based upon communication of an aesthetic feeling rather than the intrinsic value of the work. By taking up Duchamp's oeuvre from his early efforts at cubism to the Fountain and beyond, De Duve provides an overview of the aporias of painting in industrial society where expression is not limited to an image or a canvas and everything from canvass, to paints to objects are ready-made and presented to the artist, to the forum in which artwork occurs and to the audience to whom art is both directed and excluded.
In the process, De Duve examines aesthetic theories that seek to respond to the revolutions of the avant-garde in which obsolescence is built in to the very theory of an always new artistic experience. Always respectful of the viewer's response, De Duve is able to "paint a portrait" of the challenges to art and to theory while providing a theoretical justification for being able to say, "this work is both art and is better or worse as art than this work which is also art."
De Duve makes a powerful argument that we can locate that turn in Kant's deduction of taste, where the condition of the possibility of judgement of beauty is based upon communication of an aesthetic feeling rather than the intrinsic value of the work. By taking up Duchamp's oeuvre from his early efforts at cubism to the Fountain and beyond, De Duve provides an overview of the aporias of painting in industrial society where expression is not limited to an image or a canvas and everything from canvass, to paints to objects are ready-made and presented to the artist, to the forum in which artwork occurs and to the audience to whom art is both directed and excluded.
In the process, De Duve examines aesthetic theories that seek to respond to the revolutions of the avant-garde in which obsolescence is built in to the very theory of an always new artistic experience. Always respectful of the viewer's response, De Duve is able to "paint a portrait" of the challenges to art and to theory while providing a theoretical justification for being able to say, "this work is both art and is better or worse as art than this work which is also art."
March 10, 2018
Taking into consideration that I had to put the book on hold for quite a while and that I should really read it for a second time at some point in the future (for several reasons), I can honestly say that de Duve knows what he is talking about.
This is one of those books that I believe I will never fully be able to grasp no matter how many times I read it - it is packed with references to philosophy, art history, art theory, pop culture, aesthetics, logic, etc. There is just so much information to grasp. The author's writing style does not really help in this process; he is somewhat informal and takes on a jocular tone in some chapters, but when he is dealing with the truly philosophical aspects of Duchamp's work, the reading material gets very heavy indeed.
So unless you are up for a challenge and ready to be truly dedicated to reading this book, I recommend you leave it for another time when you have built up the mental stamina do handle de Duve. I wasn't (nor do I think I will ever be really, truly ready for him), but it was worth it - I definitely learned a lot and gave my brain a quality workout while reading this book.
This is one of those books that I believe I will never fully be able to grasp no matter how many times I read it - it is packed with references to philosophy, art history, art theory, pop culture, aesthetics, logic, etc. There is just so much information to grasp. The author's writing style does not really help in this process; he is somewhat informal and takes on a jocular tone in some chapters, but when he is dealing with the truly philosophical aspects of Duchamp's work, the reading material gets very heavy indeed.
So unless you are up for a challenge and ready to be truly dedicated to reading this book, I recommend you leave it for another time when you have built up the mental stamina do handle de Duve. I wasn't (nor do I think I will ever be really, truly ready for him), but it was worth it - I definitely learned a lot and gave my brain a quality workout while reading this book.
August 24, 2025
I always say that books are "soooo good" but this book is sooooooo good. If you are interested in art i think you should drop whatver youre reading and fcheck this out
August 29, 2007
reading for an art class.
it's dense. i like the footnotes. levi-strauss and marcel mauss (the latter, who w/ another french anthropologist, wrote an interesting detailed account about the functions of sacrifice...it sound morose, but it's just what anthropologists were into those days).
it's dense. i like the footnotes. levi-strauss and marcel mauss (the latter, who w/ another french anthropologist, wrote an interesting detailed account about the functions of sacrifice...it sound morose, but it's just what anthropologists were into those days).
June 22, 2008
A+++++++++++++.
Read on tour with Mountains and David Grubbs. Slept on the floor at Bard and Wesleyan's Eclectic Society anti-frat house.
Read on tour with Mountains and David Grubbs. Slept on the floor at Bard and Wesleyan's Eclectic Society anti-frat house.
September 17, 2011
This book is definitly worth visiting if you're interested in art, a concise account. His first book 'Pictorial Nominalism' is damn good too.
April 10, 2014
Thought provoking for those interested in art theory and history.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews