Marcel Duchamp: Readymades

Porte-Bouteilles, 1914

"A POINT WHICH I WANT VERY MUCH TO ESTABLISH IS THAT THE CHOICE OF THESE "READYMADES" WAS NEVER DICTATED BY ESTHETIC DELECTATION.        THIS CHOICE WAS BASED ON A REACTION OF VISUAL INDIFFERENCE WITH AT THE SAME TIME A TOTAL ABSENCE OF GOOD OR BAD TASTE ... IN FACT A COMPLETE ANESTHESIA." Marcel Duchamp: Apropos of 'Readymades'. (Lecture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 19, 1961.) Art and Artists, 1, 4 (July 1966).

. . . le readymade, c'est n'importe quoi. Ou encore: le readymade est absolument quelconque. C'est mon droit démocratique de juger en profane qui m'autorise à dire que, malgré leur qualités – ou leur absence de qualités – plastiques, le sèche-bouteilles, l'urinoir ou la pelle à neige sont des objets quelconques. Mais, direz-vous, rien ne m'autorise à les juger absolument quelconques. En effet, rien ne m'y autorise. Mais tout m'y oblige. Duchamp ayant anticipé l'auteur du readymade dans la position du regardeur profane qui juge que l'art moderne, au moins depuis le dadaïsme, c'est n'importe quoi, oblige en retour ce regardeur, surtout s'il est "expert", à se projeter rétrospectivement dans la position même de cet auteur et à se soumettre à la même loi que lui. C'est la loi de la modernité et elle ne dit qu'une chose: fais n'importe quoi.

La loi ne fait pas qu'interdire, elle oblige. J' appelle donc moderne l'artiste dont le devoir est (était, fut, a été?) de faire n'importe quoi. C'est un devoir et non un droit. C'est un commendement que l'artiste moderne reçoit et non une autorisation qu'il se donne. Comme tel, ce n'est même pas une loi au sens ordinaire ou juridique. La phrase "fais n'importe quoi" n'énonce pas une règle à laquelle des cas peuvent être soumis, elle prescrit au contraire d'agir sans règle.

Thierry de Duve: Au nom de l'art. Pour une archéologie de la modernité.
Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1989, p. 118-119.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922

6.4. All propositions are of equal value. (. . .) If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside of the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental.

John Cage: 4'33", 1952

This piece (for any instrument or instruments) consists of 3 parts, whose total duration is 4 minutes and 33 seconds; each part is completely silent. Though Cage has consistently displayed a profound interest in silence and "nothing", he has explained explicitly that 4'33" is meant as a vehicle to get the concert audience to listen with a serious "aesthetic attitude" to the inevitable environmental sounds, squeaks, coughs, air-conditioners, etc.

"I have spent many pleasant hours in the woods conducting performances of my silent piece, transcriptions, that is, for an audience of myself, since they were much longer than the popular length which I have had published. At one performance, I passed the first movement by attempting the identification of a mushroom which remained successfully unidentified. The second movement was extremely dramatic, beginning with the sounds of a buck and doe leaping up to within ten feet of my rocky podium... The third movement was a return to the theme of the first, but with all those profound, so-well-known alterations of world feeling associated by German tradition with the A-B-A."

John Cage: Music Lovers' Field Companion

Larry J. Solomon: The Sounds of Silence. John Cage and 4'33". 1998/2002.

See also: Silence.

La Monte Young: Compositions 1960

Tony Conrad, 1961

Piero Manzoni: Base Magica, 1961

Minos: In predicate (2), you speak of 'any transversal': a little while ago, you spoke of 'every exterior angle.' Do you make any distinction between 'any' and 'every'?
Euclid: Where the things spoken of are limited in number, I use 'every'; where infinite, I use 'any' in order to bring the idea within the grasp of our finite intellects. For instance, you may talk of 'every grain of sand in the world': there are, no doubt, what country-folk would call 'a good few' of them, but still the number is limited, and the mind can just grasp the idea. But if you tell me that 'every cubic inch of Space contains eight cubic half-inches,' my mind is unable to form a distinct conception of the subject of your Proposition: you would convey the same truth, and in a form I could grasp, by saying 'any cubic inch.'

Charles L. Dodgson: Euclid and his modern rivals. 
London: Macmillan, 1879. [Second edition, 1885, p. 25.]