Text 2. MARCEL DUCHAMP. “THE CREATIVE ACT”

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3. Find the following words in a dictionary and memorize their meanings. 
add 
approval 
attribute 
avoid 
bear 
clarify 
consecrate 
contain 
contribution 
decipher 
determine 
bear 
clarify 
consecrate 
contain 
obvious 
osmosis
pain 
pigment 
prompt 
pure 
raw 
contribution 
decipher 
determine 
digest 
refer 
refuse 
rehabilitate 
relation 
scale 
seek 
transference 
4. Read the text. 
Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: 
the artist on one hand and on the other the spectator who later becomes the 
posterity. 
To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the 
labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing. 
If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him 
the state of consciousness on the esthetic plane about what he is doing or why 
he is doing it. All his decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with 
pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, 
or eben thought out. 
T. S. Eliot, in his essay on “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, writes: 
“The more perfect the artist, the more completely will the mind digest and 
transmute the passions which are its material”. 
Millions of artists create; only a few thousands are discussed or accepted 
by the spectator and many less again are consecrated by posterity. 
In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a 
genius; he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his 
declarations take a social value and that, finally, posterity includes him in the 
primers of Art History. 
I know that this statement will not meet with approval of many artists who 
refuse this mediumistic role and insist on the validity of their awareness in the 
creative act – yet, art history has consistently decided upon the virtues of a 
work of art through considerations completely divorced from the rationalized 
explanations of the artist. 

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If the artist, as a human being, full of the best intentions toward himself and 
the whole world, plays no role at all in the judgment of his own work, how can 
one describe the phenomenon which prompts the spectator to react critically to 
the work of art? In other words how does this reaction come about? 
This phenomenon is comparable to a transference from the artist to the 
spectator in the form of an esthetic osmosis taking place through the inert mat-
ter, such as pigment, piano or marble. 
But before we go further, I want to clarify our understanding of the word 
“art” – to be sure, without an attempt to a definition. 
What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, what-
ever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same 
way as a bad emotion is still an emotion. 
Therefore, when I refer to “art coefficient”, it will be understood that I refer 
not only to great art, but I am trying to describe the subjective mechanism 
which produces art in a raw state – à l’etat brut – bad, good of indifferent. 
In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization through a 
chain of totally subjective reactions. His struggle toward the realization is a 
series of efforts, pains, satisfactions, refusals, decisions, which also cannot and 
must not be fully self-conscious, at least on the esthetic plane. 
The result of this struggle is a difference between the intention and its re-
alization, a difference which the artist is not aware of. 
Consequently, in the chain of reactions accompanying the creative act, a 
link is missing. This gap which represents the inability of the artist to express 
fully his intention; this difference between what he intended to realize and did 
realize, is the personal “art coefficient” contained in the work. 
In other words, the personal “art coefficient” is like an arithmetical relation 
between the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed. 
To avoid a misunderstanding, we must remember that this “art coefficient” 
is a personal expression of art “à l’etat brut”, that is, still in a raw state, which 
must be “refined” as pure sugar from molasses, by the spectator; the digit of 
this coefficient has no bearing whatsoever on his verdict. The creative act 
takes another aspect when the spectator experiences the phenomenon of 
transmutation; through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an ac-
tual transubstantiation has taken place, and the role of the spectator is to de-
termine the weight of the work on the esthetic scale. 
All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator 
brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and inter-
preting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative 
act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives its final verdict and 
sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.

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