Spatial seductions: The everyday interiorities of Marcel Duchamp, Edward Kienholz, and Pepón Osorio

Author: Pablo Meninato Year: 2018 Source type: chapter (Chapter 14 of The Interior Architecture Reader, ed. Gregory Marinic, Routledge, 2018) Raw file: raw/chapters/meninato_2018-spatial-seductions-everyday-interiorities.md

Summary

Meninato reads the spatial works of Marcel Duchamp, Edward Kienholz, and Pepón Osorio — readymade, assemblage, and tableau — as an alternative avant-garde lineage whose "spatial/object-oriented process" supplies a critical lens for interior architecture and adaptive reuse. Against modernism's "relentless rejection of tradition, search for abstraction, and creation of spatial forms devoid of figurative iconography" (exemplified by van Doesburg's Contra-Construction), Duchamp's readymades and door/window works demonstrate that architectural elements can be renewed through displacement alone, "without the involvement of a formal transformation"; Kienholz and Osorio then develop the tableau — "fundamentally a three-dimensional collage" — as a politically charged, scenographically conceived interior. The chapter concludes that interior space can be formed through "mimetic tactics such as the displacement, rotation, fragmentation, or dislocation of ordinary objects," that interiority becomes "the site of reassembling, whereby the open quality of displacement takes the place of unity," and that reconsidering disposable objects for "alternate and poetic meanings" makes interior environments "more sustainable, suggestive, and poetic."

Key Claims

Contemporary sculptural interiors (blobs, fabrications, topographies, parametrics) inherit an avant-garde formalism whose origins lie in suprematism, constructivism, and de Stijl; van Doesburg's Contra-Construction is "a formal laboratory whose ultimate goal appears to substantiate the claims of the manifesto," where "the door… is conceived as the absence of a wall" (van Doesburg's manifesto quoted from Conrad's anthology, p. 79; Vidler's description of the blob aesthetic quoted from Histories of the Immediate Present, pp. 178–179).
Duchamp represents an "alternative avant-garde that dwelled on conceptual and intellectual elaborations rather than formal and visual conditions" — contradicting modern art's rejection of the past and search for abstraction, "proposing instead a fresh look at existing forms and a reconsideration of the figurative component in art."
The readymade "redefined the most fundamental conception of the artistic act, since the artist is no longer the one who produces the work of art; instead, he chooses it" — Roue de bicyclette (1913) placing attention in "the displacement of those objects… removed from its expected function."
Fresh Widow (1920), a "semi-readymade": a miniature French window glazed with black leather, "a sort of oxymoron: an anti-window" — "deprived of its conventional function it is confirmed as an idea, an abstract and intangible concept susceptible to innumerable variations." Duchamp: "I could have made twenty windows with a different idea in each one" (quoted in D'Harnoncourt & McShine, p. 295).
Porte: 11 Rue Larrey (1927): a standard door whose corner location and hinge make it "simultaneously open and closed" in two adjacent openings — "The originality does not lie in the door itself… but in its corner location and its particular swing and operation."
Étant donnés (1946–66), built in secrecy over twenty years, paradoxically conceived to be permanently closed: the voyeur peeps through two eye-level holes at a hyperrealistic nude tableau — "In its renewed function, the door has become a miniature window." Meaning renewed "without the involvement of a formal transformation" (the door brought from Cadaqués, displaced and perforated).
The tableau/installation — "fundamentally a three-dimensional collage where the space or scene is transformed not by means of formalistic manipulations, but through the disparate displacement and combination of ordinary objects" — descends from Duchamp's assemblages and shifts emphasis to "metaphorical and allegorical associations rather than formal or spatial configurations," recovering themes modernism overlooked: "desire, eroticism, or unpredictable associations."
Kienholz's The State Hospital (1966) replicates the Étant donnés voyeuristic apparatus: the viewer's "only option is to approach the cut in the door and try to spy" two shackled figures with illuminated fish-bowl heads — a scene of "immense pain and sadness, perhaps a stripped-bare reconstruction of the sadistic scenes that the artist witnessed himself" (Kienholz worked in a Washington mental hospital in 1947).
Kienholz's Portable War Memorial (1968) opposes a "space of war" (marines, inverted cross, Uncle Sam, the dwarfed figure in a trash can resembling iron-lung polio treatment) to a lounge zone Kienholz called "business as usual" — "the perverse and perhaps indispensable side of American wars abroad."
Osorio "often refers to his work as 'social architecture'" (a notion Jennifer A. González correlates with Beuys's "social sculpture"); his Badge of Honor (1995) stages a prison cell and a son's saturated room separated by a wall that is "both the impediment and the link," its title "disturbingly ironic" — the "eerie pride" of kids whose fathers are incarcerated.
Osorio's Lonely Soul (2008): displacement as theme and tactic — the tilted piragua cart "as if it were floating in the waters of the Caribbean," crutches converted into columns, and "the Duchampean bicycle wheel does not appear to turn; instead, it has become a dysfunctional and ornamental element."
The thesis: interior space's formation "is not necessarily – or exclusive – the gestation of new forms, but that it can also contemplate a range of mimetic tactics such as the displacement, rotation, fragmentation, or dislocation of ordinary objects and elements"; "Conceiving space through scenographic means obliges the viewer to think of interiority as the site of reassembling, whereby the open quality of displacement takes the place of unity."
Kienholz: "the self-concept of our society can be inferred from its garbage" (quoted in Schulze, Leonardo, 1990, p. 373) — an affinity with Venturi's "An architect should use convention and make it vivid… use convention unconventionally" (Complexity and Contradiction, p. 42): "a full reconsideration of the value of ordinary, disposable, and conventional objects."
Sustainability: "We know the world is saturated with objects; most of them are likely to end up in landfills. Rather than dismissing (throwing away) those things, the challenge is how to discover alternate and poetic meanings in them" — reuse and recycling leading to "a reconsideration of interior environments in a more sustainable, suggestive, and poetic manner."
Architectural parallels for assemblage: the "social explorations" of Samuel Mockbee's Rural Studio in Hale County and Teddy Cruz's collage-like Tijuana–San Diego constructions (note 17); Ellen Dunham-Jones on suburbia retrofitting (note 18).

Connections

Concepts: readymade · tableau · voyeurism · assemblage · appropriation · uncanny · domestic-interior · interiority · interior-architecture · adaptive-reuse · sustainability · counter-construction · authorship · montage · politicizing-the-interior · junkspace · ugly-and-ordinary · modernism

Authors: Pablo Meninato (author) · Anthony Vidler (quoted at the opening, pp. 178–179) · Robert Venturi (quoted, p. 42) · Calvin Tomkins (cited for the Duchamp biography) · Arthur Danto (the wiki's readymade theorist — the "transfiguration of the commonplace" subtends Meninato's problem). Discussed but not paged: Marcel Duchamp, Edward Kienholz, Pepón Osorio (subjects, not authors of this source), Theo van Doesburg, Anne D'Harnoncourt, Rosalind Krauss, Jennifer A. González.

Debates: truth-and-illusion — the tableau's peephole illusion (the voyeur's body forced to the fixed point, the hyperrealistic scene behind the closed door) as a modern descendant of Pozzo's joining of truth and illusion.

Related source notes: Danto — The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (the readymade/artworld problem in philosophy of art) · Spuybroek — Habit and Inhabit, Stuff and Trash (the object-to-trash spectrum vs. Kienholz's garbage) · Qureshi — Spatial therapies (adaptive reuse's sustainable register) · Webb — Inside out (the alternate Reader chapter on interiors as distended negatives) · Hollis — (Re)constructing Histories (the Reader's historiographic opening)

Direct Quotes

"This chapter analyzes the spatial works of Marcel Duchamp, Edward Kienholz, and Pepón Osorio to unpack notions of inheritance, adaptation, reuse, and social agency sharing common motivations with interior architecture." (chapter opening)

"The works and ideas of Marcel Duchamp represent an alternative avant-garde that dwelled on conceptual and intellectual elaborations rather than formal and visual conditions." (Duchamp section)

"This seemingly simple effect, later known as 'readymade,' redefined the most fundamental conception of the artistic act, since the artist is no longer the one who produces the work of art; instead, he chooses it." (Duchamp section)

"I used the idea of the window to take a point of departure… I could have made twenty windows with a different idea in each one, the windows being called 'my windows' the way you say 'my etchings'." (Duchamp, quoted in the chapter from D'Harnoncourt & McShine, p. 295)

"The title and the actual artifact constitute a sort of oxymoron: an anti-window." (Duchamp section, on Fresh Widow)

"With this simple procedure, Duchamp achieved a seemingly impossible condition: a door is that is simultaneously open and closed." (Duchamp section, on Porte: 11 Rue Larrey; wording as printed)

"A comparison between both of Duchamp's doors offers a paradox: while Porte surprises because it can be always open, Étant donnés was conceived to be permanently closed." (Duchamp section)

"In its renewed function, the door has become a miniature window." (Duchamp section, on Étant donnés)

"Étant donnés is an invitation to a voyeuristic experience, capable of provoking shame, rejection, or allure." (Duchamp section)

"With the notion of the assemblage, Duchamp introduced an alternative approximation to what constitutes the realization of interior space and the ambiguous status of architectural elements, where the emphasis is placed in metaphorical and allegorical associations rather than formal or spatial configurations." (Duchamp section)

"One of the artistic avenues that derives from Duchamp's assemblages was installation art, namely the tableau, which is fundamentally a three-dimensional collage where the space or scene is transformed not by means of formalistic manipulations, but through the disparate displacement and combination of ordinary objects." (end of Duchamp section)

"While Duchamp conceived the assemblage as a medium to convey the absurdities of life and the latent power of the erotic, Kienholz and Osorio utilize similar tactics to expose the apparent or implicit conflicts that pervade our contemporary world." (Kienholz section)

"In this case, the scene is provocative: a single bulb illuminates two similar creatures lying on metal bunk beds, each shackled with a leather strap to the bed's frame. Both appear naked, with their genitals exposed, their heads made from illuminated fish bowls." (Kienholz section, on The State Hospital)

"This is the area Kienholz described as 'business as usual,' the perverse and perhaps indispensable side of American wars abroad." (Kienholz section, on Portable War Memorial)

"Operating simultaneously as dioramas, spatial installations, or episodic fragments of interior design, Osorio often refers to his work as 'social architecture,' a notion that becomes palpable in his installation Badge of Honor." (Osorio section)

"The massive wall that separates the two spaces may be interpreted as both the impediment and the link between both characters." (Osorio section, on Badge of Honor)

"In what may be interpreted as a subtle homage, the Duchampean bicycle wheel does not appear to turn; instead, it has become a dysfunctional and ornamental element." (Osorio section, on Lonely Soul)

"Both Kienholz's and Osorio's works demonstrate that the formation of interior space is not necessarily – or exclusive – the gestation of new forms, but that it can also contemplate a range of mimetic tactics such as the displacement, rotation, fragmentation, or dislocation of ordinary objects and elements." (closing section)

"Conceiving space through scenographic means obliges the viewer to think of interiority as the site of reassembling, whereby the open quality of displacement takes the place of unity." (closing section)

"Edward Kienholz once said, 'the self-concept of our society can be inferred from its garbage'" (closing section; Kienholz quoted in Schulze, Leonardo, 1990, p. 373)

"An architect should use convention and make it vivid. I mean he should use convention unconventionally… I do not refer to the sophisticated products of industrial design, which are usually beautiful, but to the vast accumulation of standard, anonymously designed products connected with architecture and construction, and also to commercial display elements which are positively banal or vulgar in themselves and are seldom associated with architecture." (Venturi, quoted in the closing section from Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, p. 42)

"We know the world is saturated with objects; most of them are likely to end up in landfills. Rather than dismissing (throwing away) those things, the challenge is how to discover alternate and poetic meanings in them." (closing section)

"Thinking of creative means for reusing and recycling existing objects, elements, and buildings could lead to a reconsideration of interior environments in a more sustainable, suggestive, and poetic manner." (closing section)

Open Questions

The door paradox — Porte "can be always open," Étant donnés "permanently closed" — splits displacement into functional and inoperative variants. Which transfers to adaptive reuse: the element re-meaning'd while still working, or the element deliberately made inoperable as representation? (A door that "has become a miniature window" no longer does what a door does.)
The tableau obliges the viewer to think of interiority "as the site of reassembling" — but the chapter's key works achieve this through voyeurism, shame, and surveillance (the peephole, the barred hospital window, the prison cell). Is the politically effective tableau interior necessarily an ethically troubling one?
Kienholz's garbage maxim suggests the self can be read from its trash; Spuybroek's stuff-and-trash spectrum (see Habit and Inhabit, Stuff and Trash) theorizes the same terrain ontologically. Is "the discovery of alternate and poetic meanings" in junk a recuperation that neutralizes the critique the garbage was making?
Osorio's "social architecture" (via González, against Beuys's "social sculpture") — does the term describe the work's content (diaspora, incarceration) or its mode of production (rooms built as social argument)? The chapter leaves the Beuys correspondence asserted rather than developed.
The chapter positions installation art as a source for interior architecture and adaptive reuse. Are there built, disciplinary practices (Mockbee's Rural Studio, Teddy Cruz's Tijuana collages — note 17) that already perform this transfer, and does the direction of influence run both ways?