There once was a man who came to New York from France around 1915. He had been a painter, but decided he wanted to do something else. And at a time when people thought art could only be “pretty paintings and sculptures by hand” this man decided to turn a urinal upside down, sign it and call it dart. That man was Marcel Duchamp. And Marcel’s Masterpiece: How a Toilet Shaped the History of Art by Jeff Mack tells us that and more.
My rule number one with art: Remember there is a reason art rhymes with a bodily function. And Duchamp’s work raised a stink. Big time. Was this art? Who decides what is art after all? Is it art because it is in an art museum? Or was the art really that Ducamp got people thinking it was art? Regardless of the answers, this book is filled with all the goodies of the time and what followed. While not a pure biography it does give historical facts about this so-called-artist and how he influenced people to come and the movement of Dada art. We also see some of the works, events and people that came afterwards. Like Yoko Ono adding a letter in front of the word Art. And regardless if you think that is art or not, or an upside down toilet is art, you will realize there is a lot of things to discuss.
Of course Mack’s artwork is, well, art! To me anyways. I enjoyed the colors, and the messiness of things. It is busy and yet, you can pick out what is going on. However, I feel that I need to read it at least once more, if not two more times. Once for text, once for art and once to combine it all. The images really capture and support the story but also is its own character as well.
This above book was one of the older books I found an online link. A few emails later I found one for A History of Toilet Paper (and Other Potty Tools) by Sophia Gholz and illustrated by Xiana Teimoy. This book, while heavy on the facts, there are a lot of potty puns (as there were in Duchamp’s book) and it can get drawn out, was equally fun and interesting. The fact that it would take more than 195,000 years for toilet paper to become what we know it as today is bizarrely humorous. But maybe not as humorous as a shared poop brush that got passed around the open bathroom social time. The pluses and minus and even the “just not there, yet” come alive. We get the real poop on the scooping of human bums. We see how toilets evolved over the centuries, how only Queens and Kings owned forms of toilet paper due to expense, and how we took the paper to the potty (as a couple of brothers would do).
The artwork is busy and a treat. Teimoy created things that allow humor and fact to sit side by side. The colors and details are bold, bright and colorful. Things are cute, serious and funny all at once. They are a treat for the eyes. And yes, this is another one that needs a few reads to be able to capture the aroma of the theme.