Duchamp was not the only artist to tackle the toilet. This was one Edward Weston's more important photographs in his development as one of the masters of photography.
Weston wrote about this in his Day Books (Dairies): (October 21, 1925)
(Quote:)
"Form follows function." Who said this I don't know, but the writer spoke well!
I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty. It might be suspicioned that I am in a cynical mood to approach such a subject matter when I might be doing beautiful women or "God's out-of-doors," -- or even considered that my mind holds lecherous images arising from restraint of appetite.
But no! My excitement was absolute aesthetic response to form. For long I have considered photographing this useful and elegant accessory to modern hygienic life, but not until I actually contemplated its image on my ground glass did I realize the possibilities before me. I was thrilled! - here was a very sensuous curve of the 'human form divine' by minus imperfections.
Never did the Greeks reach a more significant consummation to their culture..."
(end quote)
I see this photograph as a necessary precursor to Weston's later images of shell, peppers, etc.
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/W/weston/weston_pepper_number30_full.html
Is Weston's image of a toilet more a work of art than Duchamp's actual toilet? Does anyone care? If, as someone suggests, it is all subjective, then I certainly have the right to think that Weston went through a transformative process to "see" something in a new light that is absent when I view on of "R. Mutt's" stand-up drainages.
It is in the same vein that I view Goldsworthy's "Rivers and Tides" as evidence of just what we will do to nature in the name of civilization. Maybe that is his point. What I see in a river running red is the transformative mark of man on nature and the hint of just what pollution might be doing. In my part of this country, we have a Report from the Bandlands on a creek running orange with the spillage from a long abandoned mercury mine and I do see the commonality.
Posted by Wes at December 11, 2004 09:32 AM