“I think Duchamp thrived on a certain type of rejection. One of the most incredible things about Duchamp is that he was somehow able to do all of the things that you shouldn’t do. His work should almost cancel itself out, but it doesn’t. It’s such a succession of accidents. He was so blasphemous, and yet he becomes a template for the idea of art in context ... about the thoughts that happen before the work comes into existence. He a wonderful example—it’s not simply chaos—of an iconoclastic person who comes from inside the belly of the art world to create something that turned the art world inside out.”
Musee National d'Art Moderne - Centre Pompidou, Paris
Image: © RMN-Grand Palais /Dist. Photo SCALA, Florence
Artwork: © Association Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2022. Duchamp, Marcel (1887-1968)/© RMN-Grand Palais /Dist. Photo
Font (Tate Gallery Liverpool) from 1995 is an early example of Gavin Turk’s radical artistic output, encapsulating the bold irreverence that marked his ascent to international acclaim in the 1990s. Consisting of a porcelain bowl placed on a wooden plinth, the present work conjures a host of references to Modern and avant-garde art, from Piero Manzoni’s Magic Bases to Richard Hamilton, Marcel Broodthaers and André Breton, but it is Marcel Duchamp’s seminal Fountain that is most clearly the subject. Indeed, the Font sculptures hold a critical place in Turk’s practice, where Duchamp looms large as a predecessor of Turk’s provocative and cheeky interactions with the structures of contemporary art. Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain was bought from a plumber in 1917 and signed “R. Mutt”, Turk by contrast signs his font with his own name. The resemblance of the porcelain bowl to a giant eggcup draws upon Turks longstanding interest in eggs as an image of the dynamic between original creativity and the force of history and tradition. Layered with conceptual resonance and visually striking, Font (Tate Gallery Liverpool) delves into the inconsistencies of identity and authority within art structures. Another version of this sculpture is held in the Tate Collection.
“There’s an odd relationship here with terms ‘originality’ and ‘fake’. It is more effective to look at the role art has in questioning ontological problems using forms of illusion, pictorial representation, and narrative structures. Art can enable an audience, assisting in communication about life and nature itself.”
