M.Z. In your book “Marcel Duchamp and the Remnants of the Readymade”, you explore the idea of a direct genealogy between collage and the readymade. How do you understand this connection, and how does it transform the notion of art?

H.Z. I start from the idea that collage (gluing), created by Picasso and Braque, is a form of appropriation. It involves including a fragment or a worthless remnant of reality (a newspaper clipping, a printed image, a pin, a broken mirror) into a painting. Appropriation is one of the key avant-garde practices in the early 20th century, and from it the readymade (a manufactured, already-made product) emerges. Just as in collage, a fragment or remnant is glued onto the easel painting hung on a wall (in a museum), in the readymade an entire object is included in a room (in the museum). In the first case, the painting (which belongs to the art system) “legitimizes” the fragment glued to it; in the second, the museum room (which also belongs to the art system) “legitimizes” the object called a readymade within it (which, like the collage fragment, had never belonged to the language of art). Therefore, both collage and the readymade indicate that the objects and phenomena of “real reality” do not belong to a separate domain from those of artistic reality. I can say, by analogy, that the painting is to the wall (where it’s hung), as the collage is to the painting (where it’s glued), as the readymade is to the room (where it’s exhibited), as the room is to the museum (to which it belongs), as the museum is to the city (to which it belongs), and so on.

This “chain” can help us see how the limits, classifications, and definitions of what constitutes a work of art are radically dissolved with the emergence of the “foreign body” that is the readymade. A consequence of this dissolution, which began in the early 20th century, is experienced in contemporary (i-limited) art, where everything can be included, and only exclusion is excluded.

M.Z. In Duchamp’s case, this suppression of limits is a long and gradual process, as his thinking and practice evolve. Reading his texts, two ideas stand out to me: in “The Great Problem of Art in This Country”, Duchamp expresses a desire to return painting to the service of the mind. And in another text, “Regions Not Governed by Time and Space”, he recounts how, after painting Nude Descending a Staircase, which was key in the Modernist context, he was struck by the mechanical perception he experienced when seeing a chocolate grinder through a shop window. Then he performs two operations on his work: on one hand, bringing back intellectual engagement to painting, and on the other, inserting the idea of the “mechanical” and the “machine” into his work—opening those limits you were mentioning.

H.Z. For traditional art and culture at the beginning of the 20th century, a work of art stood in total opposition to any utilitarian object manufactured by industry. And it is precisely from this realm that Duchamp selects the objects he would “baptize” as readymades. I reiterate: these are the first “responsible agents” for the dissolution of artistic categories, the notion of art itself, and deviations in artistic practice.

His earlier paintings—such as Coffee Grinder (1911) and Nude Descending a Staircase (1912)—are undeniably important contributions to the development of avant-garde painting. But this phase would be transgressed by Duchamp himself when, in 1913, he creates Bicycle Wheel, which initiates the readymade series.

The importance of the readymade is not in its form, color, texture, or specific utilitarian origin—or even the material it’s made from: it doesn’t matter whether it’s a bicycle wheel, a stool, a snow shovel, a dog comb, or a urinal. What matters is the forced (and “inadmissible”) relationship with the new context where it is placed: the art world. More specifically, the museum—a space designed to preserve and present material culture, a place of memory, representation, and celebration, with its urban placement, sacramental aura, and rituals.

The readymade was conceived to be exhibited in a museum gallery. Removed from the art context, it ceases to be problematic. It results from a misfit between an object and the space that contains it—between the a-symbolic readymade and its symbolic setting. This dissonance challenges the perception of the viewer, who may feel pleasure or displeasure, offense or questioning of their aesthetic experience within the museum itself. Their attitude is no longer passive and reverent but active and critical. Consequently, it also challenges the figure of the author: the artist who signs it, dates it, and invents its title (a legacy dating back to Renaissance artists of the 15th century).

Interestingly, while Duchamp was exploring the object-context relationship, Kazimir Malevich was creating radical abstractions like White Square on White Background—monochromes that represent the zero degree of painting. Between these two opposite yet complementary poles, the dilemmas of contemporary art continue to unfold.

M.Z. Malevich opens an exploration from within traditional art history practices, and Duchamp, on the other hand, subverts those same practices. We enter a new condition—one you’ve discussed—where the industrial object undergoes legitimization to be reinserted into the art circuit. In your book, you elaborate on how the readymade transforms the traditional relationship between artist and viewer, based on an object from the industrial world. You mention the loss of poiesis that characterizes the readymade, which begins to generate new notions within Aesthetics. How is Aesthetics transformed from that point on?

H.Z. The dissonance between the readymade artifact and the museum gallery that displays it “as if it were a work of art” problematizes the viewer’s perception. They feel confused and begin to question their own aesthetic experience and the cultural function of the museum as a public institution. Their attitude becomes critical and active: “It is the viewers who make the paintings,” Duchamp once said, referring to an aesthetics of reception equivalent to the aesthetics of production.

I must emphasize that the readymade is not a handcrafted product. That is, it does not bear the marks of the artisan’s hand or knowledge, nor the anthropological status of the community that understands and uses it. It is instead an industrial, mass-produced object, detached from any symbolic or affective relationship with the user. The object selected and acquired by Duchamp for exhibition is not the “creation” of a sensitive, flesh-and-blood artist, but a product of the collective subject of the assembly line: anonymous and waged.

This pure commodity, which Duchamp manipulates and presents as a work of art, also problematizes the “inauthentic” figure of the “artist Duchamp” through his “misappropriation.” In fact, most readymades are authenticated: they are signed, dated, and titled (part of Duchamp’s strategy, which appropriates the Renaissance legacy of authorship).

M.Z. What do you consider to be the difference between the production of photography or cinema and these functional objects reinserted into the art system?

H.Z. The idea of collage, originating with the Cubists who incorporated real elements into painting, also has two non-pictorial precedents. The first arose around 1850 with photomontage, a technique for composing a new image by combining existing photos or negatives. The second is cinematic montage, inherent in the invention of the cinematograph by Louis Lumière in 1896—it consists of selecting and assembling filmed scenes.

In the history of Western art, collage and its developments—such as three-dimensional assemblages, installations, and the readymade—transcend medium-specific boundaries. They extend into all the arts and into fields of visual information and communication, industrial design, fashion, and diffuse aesthetic phenomena.

The consequences of collage are only comparable to those of the invention of perspective and photography. None of these are mere tools for representing the world—they are conceptions, intuitions, and images of the world. Perspective belongs to the 15th-century Renaissance. Photography (which announces cinema) belongs to the 19th-century Modernity. Collage (which announces the readymade) belongs to the early 20th century.

M.Z. What happens in the period following the avant-garde and all these changes? We’re now a century past The Fountain, yet it still seems we can’t agree on the name or conditions of that period.

H.Z. Even if we don’t fully embrace Modernity, I don’t think it can be discarded by simply inventing terms like “postmodernity” or “late modernity.” We are a century past The Fountain, and yet it remains problematic—just as many artworks after the avant-garde are. I believe the works that cause us problems are contemporary, beyond chronology—beyond the time and place in which they were made. Fountain still hasn’t found its place, whether in 1917 or 2017. In some way, it remains anachronistic.

Giorgio Agamben said, “…the one who truly belongs to their time, the true contemporary, is someone who does not coincide completely with it nor adhere to its claims. They are, in this sense, untimely.” One might say that artists who fully align with their own era do not live in contemporaneity, because they cannot fix their gaze upon it.

M.Z. And what happens within the arts?

H.Z. Nothing happens in art anymore—everything happens in the arts. We must use the plural. The relationships between things are more fertile than the things themselves. The conflicting relationship between aesthetics and ethics is more stimulating than aesthetics (or ethics) on its own.

From my ephemeral convictions, I continue to ask: what remains of the concern for the arts, if we believe their history has yet to be exhausted?

M.Z. All of this is framed within consumer society and the society of spectacle. There’s a passage from Duchamp’s writings that foresaw this very early in the 20th century: “Progress is a great pretense on our part. The great advantage of the previous period was that art was a laboratory endeavor; now it is diluted by public consumption.” What do you think is the role of art in this society of spectacle?

H.Z. It would be utopian to think that artistic practices and their material (or immaterial) consequences could escape, ignore, or use the (permanent) society of spectacle in which we are all immersed. But a critical attitude is still possible: a deviation from “once-and-for-all” established codes, suspicion, irony, careful observation, the essay, the creation of questions, dialogue, discovery of other paths and meanings, etc. As someone said, we must “inhabit the interstices” (futile and significant at once) that are still available to us.

My own aesthetic experiences tell me that art makes sense if it transforms meaning. There are works of art—ancient, modern, and contemporary—that speak to and influence our immediate present. They are inexhaustible works because they demand attentive viewing and reading, excluding the distracted perception and shallow curiosity evoked by the society of spectacle and image.

These works aim for us to un-cover meanings through our knowledge, perceptions, and intuitions—they speak to the self. It’s clear that the brutal power of the information-communication-advertising triad is evident in the generalized plundering that trivializes and parodies critical cultural perception, especially in socio-aesthetic experiences with artworks.

Nonetheless, although our globalized environment shows that mass access to distraction is a reality—that everything is visible, negotiable, communicable, and consumable—our own awareness tells us that the least visible is the most neglected, the most enduring, and the most unpredictable.

If artistic practice does not introduce elements of discontinuity and difference into the works, if they do not offer deviations in the face of the abuses of media operations, they simulate and replace art itself—and disqualify reflection on art. Perhaps something different might emerge in the link between aesthetics and ethics. I don’t have a crystal ball (laughs).

M.Z. This reminds me of a quote from your book: “art makes sense if it transforms meaning”. Yet I also think about the entire art system that legitimizes practices and objects—something clearly addressed by Dickie and others. Do you think this system of legitimization, its networks and relationships, are the only paths that allow this “transformation of meaning” you speak of? How could such transformation occur?

H.Z. I can imagine how the meaning of art might change through autonomous artistic practice and its results—the so-called artworks—but this doesn’t entail having a method or strategy. I believe the current institutional-economic art system, with its legitimations and canonizations, is not the driving force for transforming the meaning of art. On the contrary—it’s the best mechanism for maintaining art exactly as it is. Let’s say the current system wants to persist in being—which means persisting in its power, that is, its abuse of power.

M.Z. This collapse of values reminds me of your book’s title: “Marcel Duchamp and the Remnants of the Readymade”. Why the “remnants”?

H.Z. The era of the readymade is a hundred years old—only remnants remain. We work with what’s left of art history, of the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde movements. It would be naive and pretentious to believe that no floating remnants survived the wrecks and that we must or can create something original and true from nothing (as was claimed by vanguard dogmas that rejected the past). I’m more interested in the figure of the artist as mediator or intermediary—as interpreter or translator. As a fisherman of floating or sunken remnants.

M.Z. I’d like to propose a reconsideration of your approach to the remnants. In your book, you explain how Duchamp took industrial objects—objects outside the language of art at the time—and that’s precisely where the readymade found a new position in relation to both the avant-garde and traditional art references. It seems to me, now marking the centenary of Fountain, that the readymade has become a language in itself. We later see it evolve in Warhol and many contemporary artists. What do you think of this reinterpretation?

H.Z. I agree. When everyone can make readymades, it means it has become a genre—it has been trivialized. The society of spectacle is also the society of the simulacrum, of “everything counts equally.” Some artists, like Jeff Koons, are famous thanks to their readymades. If everything visible can become a visual artwork, if everything is valid and usable at any time and place, if what doesn’t communicate cannot exist, then everything must be visible, communicable, consumable, and recyclable. And spectators demand more and more.

M.Z. Do you think it’s worthwhile to look back—to reflect on artistic practices from a hundred years ago, like Duchamp’s Fountain?

H.Z. I try to live in the immediate present—here and now. I can’t forget the past (who can?), nor do I want to reject it, like the Futurists who toyed with the idea of burning museums and the city of Venice. I see some works by recent (Lucio Fontana) or distant (Diego Velázquez) artists as inexhaustible sources. I feel like an heir to many modern artists, probably because my gaze is no longer fully modern. I mean that if I consider myself an heir to Kasimir Malevich and Marcel Duchamp, it’s because I have distanced myself—I don’t share the spirit of the age I currently live in, here and now.