standard stoppages...

marcel duchamp's three standard stoppages is one of my favorite works. it hits you on two levels; the things are simply beautiful, and they are fodder for a ton of mental wandering. when i discovered this drawing from 1911 by francis coy, i couldn't help but think she got there first... no curves and no irony, but a darned beautiful little drawing of lines reflecting on the potential of lengths and ripe for mental wandering.

while looking for an image of duchamp's stoppages, i found an interesting article on the lie of duchamp's method in producing the stoppages. supposedly created by dropping thread a meter long from a meter's height onto a canvas; scientific method has proven duchamp's resulting forms impossible, and some detective work on the originals prove the images were built very simply. on one hand this kind of research is interesting; on the other hand, for me, it doesn't really matter, because it doesn't change my experience or relationship to the objects themselves.

for duchamp the piece was a seminal work, and not because he pulled the wool over people's eyes about its making..."for me it opened the way -the way to escape from those traditional methods of expression long associated with art. I didn't realize at the time what I had stumbled on. When you tap something, you don't always recognize the sound. That's apt to come later. For me the Three Standard Stoppages was a first gesture liberating me from the past."

in my opinion, the move wasn't only about traditional methods of expression; but also traditional methods of thinking (specifically about measurement and measuring). in this work, meaning isn't found so much in the actual method of production as it is in the idea of that production - and in the fact that the finished work is still poetic enough to evoke some very profound dialogue. there is a gargantuan world of trajectories one can take from these objects as starting points regardless of their truth.

it's the same with francis coy's drawing. i am free to travel down as many roads as my experience with this object will take me, regardless of her own intentions (probably a math exercise). its quiet poetry allows me to make it my own (not because it now lives here, but emotionally and intellectually)... and i don't really care how she made it...