I went to art school not because I liked painting or drawing. In fact, my drawing skills were less than mediocre. Painting, I barely tried. But I liked art and design, particularly art history and conceptual art. I also enjoyed writing, but I thought that art was a more conceptual field than writing. So, I picked art over journalism.
Of course, I didn't do great in any class involving any manual skill in college. But I did very well in other areas.
In my freshman year, I had this fantastic conceptual artist as a teacher. Her name is Jac Leirner, and she is known for sculptures and installations created from mundane objects and ephemera, like promotional tickets, empty packs of cigarettes, and plastic shopping bags.
I don't remember the name of the class anymore, but it was basically about painting techniques and color theory—basic stuff. But I remember that we had to paint 3 different oil paintings on paper for the semester's final project based on the lessons we had throughout the course.
I worked on the 3 pieces using the techniques we learned but referencing 3 works from my favorite painters. On the back, I wrote an essay connecting their work to the assignment. I thought it was a very clever device to downplay my lack of skills while bringing attention to what I thought was my forte: the idea behind the work.
Surprisingly, she gave me a 9. But she also said that although she believed that the thinking behind the work was brilliant, she warned me that I wouldn't get far as an artist if I didn't learn the basic techniques. She was right, but what she didn't know is that I never thought about being an artist myself. At that time, I also didn't know what I wanted to do at all.
Long story short, after working in a couple of art galleries, I scored an internship at an advertising agency in art direction following a friend's suggestion.
When I first sat in front of an Apple computer, I realized I didn't need to draw or paint anymore. I was finally free to put my ideas out without my lack of drawing skills pulling me back. I also found a field where I could have a career creating ideas without being an artist.
Art School introduced me to Marcel Duchamp. And Marcel Duchamp changed everything. I wouldn't have a career if it wasn't for Marcel Duchamp.
When Duchamp presented his work titled Fountain - essentially a urinal - signed with a pseudonym, R Mutt, to the 1917 at the Society of Independent Artists exhibit in NYC, he proposed the most provocative question to art in the 20th century: what is art? and who decides it?
In doing so, Duchamp paved the way for Conceptual art— artwork that was "in the service of the mind," as opposed to a purely "retinal" art intended only to please the eye. Duchamp established that the concept, the idea itself, is art.
This is such radical thinking that changed art, and in many ways the world, forever.
There are so many implications on the thinking that art is everywhere and that art itself is only completed in the viewers' eyes, meaning that the work of art is open and any individual interpretation is possible and welcome.
When Duchamp challenged the early 20th century notions of art, he triggered shock waves that would ultimately set people free to be creative without having to conform to taste or other conventions, allowing people like me more than 50 years later to find a way to express their creativity and make a living off of it.
Duchamp understood that technology would also disrupt the way we produce everything - including art - and that technical skills would become commodities. For this, I thank him and Apple from the bottom of my heart!
And he was entirely right. After the II World War, technology evolution would propel exponential changes that would enable people to create anything. Ideas became the utmost skill to change and shape the world we live in.
When you think of the visionaries that have been leading the world's innovation at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century, they are people who had an idea and found ways to develop technology to implement them: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg... The list goes on and on.
Ideas can change the world. And a man with a vision back in 1917 changed my life, before I was even born.