USEFUL SCULPTURE

ALLEN JONES, GABRIELLE CONILH DE BEYSSAC, ELVIRE BONDUELLE, 

NATHALIE ELEMENTO, ISABELLE PLAT

Turning objects intended for everyday use into sculpture was a focal point of the interrogation of the object in twentieth-century art. Picasso used an absinth spoon in a 1914 Cubist composition; Marcel Duchamp set a bicycle Wheel on a stool in 1913 before appropriating a urinal and conceptualizing the readymade in 1917. Thus a useful item became sculpture, in contrast, the objet retains a utilitarian value even as it claims the status of an artwork. Our normal needs and desire for comfort are what configure the practical parameters of this art. Its mission is to blow up categories and reevaluate the symbolic dimension of objects.