Painting I / Meanings, and Who Decides Them
Practice question · Select all that apply

Which of these are fair statements of Duchamp's position in the 1957 Houston lecture?

Hints
  1. Three restate the lecture; one asserts the position it was arguing against.
  2. The coefficient exists because the two terms differ.
Show the answer
  • B. The spectator completes the work by interpreting it
  • C. The art coefficient relates what was intended but unexpressed to what was expressed but unintended
  • D. The artist has no access to the second of those terms
Why

The fourth is the view the lecture displaces. If intention settled value there would be no coefficient at all, since the two terms would coincide. Duchamp's claim is that they never do, and that the difference is where the interesting part of the work happens.

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