Some artists have used the concept of instructions to allow them to make a more creative and unique piece of artwork. For example, John Baldessari, who used the idea of instructions while teaching art students.
As well as this, the American artist Sol LeWit who created 'The Photographers Playbook' containing '307 Assignments' designed to help image makers get out of creative block. |
Marcel Duchamp was a French-American painter, sculptor and writer. In 1919 he decided to deface a work of art and took the bold risk to start with arguably one of the most famous and renowned images ever created, Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa'.
Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’ is one of the most well-known and most valuable pieces of art in the world. It displays a woman dressed in a dark, simple dress with gold embroidery, as well as a scarf hangs from her left shoulder. She is seated against a scenic landscape. Mona Lisa was a real Florentine woman under the name of Lisa Gherardini and the painting displays her with an almost unnerving smile on her face. To me, I would describe Mona Lisa's smile as quite eerie, as, in my view, it's difficult to grasp any sort of emotion from her expression, and the ambiguity creates an almost unnerving atmosphere. I think the unnerving atmosphere is amplified as we, as viewers, are never truly aware of what the expression and the painting as a whole is truly trying to tell us due to the unclear, almost nonchalant expression. |
Marcel Duchamp & the 'Readymade'The term ‘readymade’ was created by Marcel Duchamp in 1916. This means taking ordinary objects, removing them from their intended use and an artist transforming them into a new piece of art.
In Duchamp’s idea of the ‘readymade’ he was protesting and breaking away of the almost rules attached to artwork. This allowed for artists to be free to express themselves more, and work with more controversial ideas without being criticised. It also allowed people to take pleasure in the basic forms of everyday life and realise that you can make something creative and interesting out of something ordinary. |