Rachel Hecker at CAMH (Houston)

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, metal wheel mounted on painted wood stool, 1951 (third version, after lost original of 1913).

While visiting Houston this July, I went to an exhibition titled It is what it is. Or is it?, curated by Dean Daderko, at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston. The text provided in the exhibition guide centers around the idea of updating the term readymade and its use in the contemporary art scene:

"As forms go, the readymade is a slippery one. Its originator, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), spoke of it as 'a form of denying the possibility of defining art.' Now, as the form nears its 100th anniversary-- Duchamp made his Bicycle Wheel in 1913-- CAMH presents It is what it is. Or is it?, a group exhibition that explores how the form has changed... Duchamp's point was for us to get caught up in a conceptual effort to consider what we can and what we can't see, and what happens when we encounter something familiar in an unexpected way... These artists' works chart changes in perception, demonstrating that artistic practice has become notably more engaged in addressing a diversity of social, political, aesthetic, and temporal realities... The readymade, and its multiple legacies, demand that we be active viewers."

While it is important to note that Daderko was not necessarily making a direct statement about a connection between the readymade and painting (out of the 31 pieces in the exhibition, only 7 are what one could call traditional paintings), I find the association intriguing. To be honest, I had never really considered how the readymade has affected painting before. Obviously, the conversation around pop art painters such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and James Rosenquist has been mostly about appropriation. However, the readymade is about to be a hundred years old, and artistic appropriation strategies are at least fifty. Looking around at what is happening now, I question how useful these terms, especially the readymade, can be when thinking about painting.

Rachel Hecker, Jesus #1 (Viggo Mortensen/Lord of the Rings), 2011, acrylic on canvas.

Citing Hecker's Jesus #1 (pictured above), as an example, I believe that many painters and artists today are doing something very different that can't quite be covered by these blanket terms. Duchamp, with his Bicycle Wheel and Fountain, took things from 'everyday life' and presented them as art with little or no alteration. Thus, the act of placing objects in a new context becomes paramount to the work. Hecker, I would argue, is not really doing the same thing. Yes, she is taking the iconic image of Jesus out of the context it would normally exist in, religious worship. And yes, she is taking the iconic image of Aragorn out of the context it would normally exist in, a Lord of the Rings movie or fan website. But, what would be considered the "readymade" here? Is it the image of Aragorn that the artist took from the movie or the internet? Is it the image of Jesus?

I believe that what Hecker is tapping into shows an overall shift in popular culture that we have been experiencing in the past decade or so, where lines between large cultural institutions such as entertainment and religion are becoming more and more blurred. What is the cause? Some may say the internet, others may say the role that celebrity culture and reality TV now play in many of our lives. Who really knows? But it is evident that this kind of mixing, combining, and regurgitating is happening all over the place. And this process cannot be easily contained or explained away by the readymade. You can follow the logic of Duchamp's readymades fairly easily: he takes an object or two and places them in a gallery as art. Hecker, on the other hand, deliberately complicates the relationships between her two conflated subject matters by the methods and materials she chooses to paint them with. The painting is not 100% photorealistic and therefore not "readymade": Aragorn's clothing is simplified and any background indicating the Lord of the Rings universe is stripped away. He is just a man in robes. But he is also Jesus, a savior among men. The airbrushing technique creates a soft-focus image which readies it for intense and sincere devotion (something which is shared by zealous Christians and obsessed fanboys alike). 

While Hecker has two more of her Jesus paintings in the show (the other two are of Pink Floyd's David Gilmour and model David Axell), Aragorn and Jesus are the perfect pair for this type of painting because they share more than just a physical likeness. In their stories, they are both heroes that save mankind. So is this stock character, the trope of a savior with mythological greatness, the real readymade here? Is there an emerging term that would do better justice to this complicated relationship? I recognize that this exhibition was more about broadening the term of readymade and don't take issue with the inclusion of Hecker's painting (on the contrary, this has made me think more about the nature of art than any other show all summer), but I can't help thinking that there is a better way to look at and talk about this kind of painting.

I am very interested in continuing this conversation, so if you have any thoughts, please feel free to leave a comment!

You can view more of Rachel Hecker's work here: rachelhecker.net, and photos of her Jesus series, (along with in-process shots), here: rachelhecker.blogspot.com.
And you can view more images from the show It is what it is. Or is it?, here: CAMH