Lyotard's arguements with duchamp

Belsey, Catherine. 2002. Post structuralism. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

"Realism, Lyotard argues, protects us from doubt" (Belsey.2002:102)

"The postmodern, or the avant-garde, refuses to conform to pre-exisiting rules. (Give example here)

http://www.imprint.co.uk/Art/jcsmainframe.html
The Emergence of Art and Language in the Human Brain
Erich Harth, Department of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244- 1130 USA. Email: erich_harth@prodigy.com
'Our brains are characterized by sensory pathways that are highly reflexive, allowing higher cortical centres to control neural activity patterns at peripheral sensory areas. This feature is characterized as an internal sketchpad and involves recursive interactions between central symbols and peripheral images. The process is assumed to be the fundamental mechanism underlying most cognitive functions. The paper attempts to portray the beginnings of art and language as natural extensions of these pre-existing internal processes, made possible by the greatly enlarged human prefrontal cortex. It views these highly social activities as originating in subjective, private discourse between the emerging self and its externalized expressions.'

Instead Lyotard argues, 'the postmodern artist or writer are working without rules, in order to discover what rules governing their work will have been. The Postmodern is both too early and too late: to early for the public, since it must be new and too late for the author who cannot know in advance whether it will prove to be intelligible, pleasurable, or absurd.'

[Relate to Koon's case here - bring in cultural thoughts on his work]

Lyotard put forward a strong plea for continued artist dissent (dissent is a sentiment or philosophy of non-agreement or opposition to a prevailing idea) He argued "Cultures need the challenge of new forms if they are not to settle into complacency or worse, terror". (Belsey 2002:100)


Realism offers us a picture of the world, in a way a safe guard from all the uncertainties in life and art. In the process of realism we can affirm the subjects and images we see as true.

Postmodernity in Lyotard's account specifies a different literary and artistic mode rather than a particular period.

Duchamp's challenge to realism is the intelligible (coherent / understandable) as postmodern. In my eyes he thrusted realism into our faces. People wanted art to be true to realism and overly subjective in order to 'accept' it. So what did Duchamp do? He produced something which was very 'real', showed the audience a true object of everyday....the urinal.
In the production of 'the Fountain' , a reproduced photographic work of Richard's Mutts urinal was when it all came down to it...ready made. So is this why this work was accepted...because it was 'culturally relative'?