Icon,Form And Visuality

Marcel Duchamp's final work,“Given: 1.Waterfall,2.The Illuminating Gas” is a mystery within the field of art history,and the research about it in Chinese has been absent.However,this art piece is so important that it connected Duchamp's creative thoughts,creative methods and his life all together.This paper revolves around several questions: What is a Given: 1.Waterfall,2.The Illuminating Gas? What is its theme? How does its fancy structure form? What is revealed behind its formal structure? The logical structure and clues of the article are based on these four questions.First,analysis of the icon is performed,investigating the origin of the images such as nude,the lamp,and the waterfall.Literary analysis is carried out,and a comparative analysis of another work by Duchamp,Big Glass,is undertaken to reveal the underlying themes of Given.Second,considering the particular form of the works,Given and Big Glass,it is inferred from comparison that the two works are actually synonymous in subject and meaning,yet different in structure.Finally,the form of Given is inspected through two differing visual modes-"hole eyes" and "diorama",which are traced back to their archeological roots,and then used to reveal the visuality behind the Given.On the one hand,the work impacts the observer: as the visuality of Given includes the observer,the visual mechanism drives the observer's desire to watch,and the observer becomes "bachelor".On the other hand,the artist cannot escape the visuality either: Duchamp's creative path from window to diorama also coincides with the commodity fetishism which is a part of the visuality.Based on the analysis of this work,this paper makes a logical interpretation of the three parts of the “Given”: image,form,and underlying visuality.This article reveals Duchamp's creating techniques and creative ideas.Since many of Duchamp's works all have intrinsic logical associations,this article is not limited to the analysis of “Given” itself,but discusses who is Duchamp and how “Given" came out.This paper uses iconology,formal analysis,and other methodologies at the same time can also interpret Duchamp in multiple dimensions.