Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel And Homage To New York

During the middle of the twentieth century, kinetic art pushed traditional boundaries with its composers seeking actively to engage a different part of the viewer's brain. Throughout the course of art history, one can see that as time progresses, artists become more and more fond of moving towards a form that utilizes new ways of interpreting art—drawing further away from traditional values and precepts and creating a refreshed modern feel to their works. The kinetic art movement does not fall far from the artistic trend when it appeared on the scene and began creating a new way for the audience to think of art by providing a body of work that is no longer stationary, decipherable, or definite. Kinetic art had been slowly creeping its way into …show more content…
Works such as Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel (1951) and Tinguely’s Homage to New York (1960) maintained the same aim at providing potential movement in their works, however, this paper will discuss how each piece created a separate interactive relationship and visual experience for the viewer. The vital point in determining if a work is interesting or not revolves around the amount of time in which the viewer or audience gives takes to understand and appreciate the piece. The average amount of time a regular viewer—whether artistically driven or not—spends looking at a work of art is “about fifteen to thirty seconds” at most. Before the startup of the movement, artist began observing viewing times and tried to figure out a way to grasp the viewer for a while longer before they moved on to the next piece. Being that kinetic art incorporated movement and required a bit of a longer time to digest mentally, it quickly became a minor frenzy for artists who wanted to delve into something new and challenging. For Duchamp, art was more than met …show more content…
Though both pieces were intended to get the viewer thinking deeper and spending more time analyzing the work, they do so through the use of the same concept of potential movement and succeeded when they first displayed their works. Now that modern day science has proven the harms of physically touching a work of art, museums are no longer taking any chances with the loss of a piece and have emplaced strict rules to abide by when browsing around at artistic dispense. This has both separated the connection in viewer experience from the original display to today and has also tainted the relationship the viewer has with the work of art and the artist. Tinguely allowed for viewers to become active with the remnants of his art and even go as far as to take it home with them after the 1960 showcase. The viewers also had the privilege of experiencing the actual performance art and aftermath as opposed to today where the Museum of Modern Art had a display of a tiny portion of the wheeled section of what was once the contraption that Tinguely had put together. The fragmented version of Tinguely’s Homage to New York is protected from the hands and “harmful oils” that have the potential of destroying what, in actuality, was