confidence – ART HEALERS

Marcel Duchamp, *Fountain*, 1917, photographed by Alfred Steiglitz, backdrop is *The Warriors*, by Marsden Hartley

When beholding a toilet enshrined upon a plinth, it might seem unrealistic to think that its role as a very ordinary object could inspire quiet confidence; but, it should.

Duchamp teaches us with this urinal, that it is not what an object is, nor is it what an object looks like, which gives it importance. It is where you dare to put it.

If we apply that to ourselves, we can learn that it is not what or who you are, nor your appearance that will ultimately determine how people see you, but the unreserved way in which you carry these things, that will help the world sit up and pay attention. If you remain thinking, ‘I’m just ordinary, performing a daily routine, unglamorous, but functioning’, then that is all you will allow yourself to become.

Proudly, the piss-pot perches, unashamed of its bog-standard appearance, bold enough to call itself a ‘fountain’ – to call itself important. And it is this confidence that we can emulate; should you not feel your best-self one day, there is a lot to be said here for the old adage: fake it till you make it.

Here is a reminder: this upside-down thing that people wee in changed art forever (and was set to sell for £1.7 million back in 2002); it has us all eternally fooled with its brazen appearances in gallery after gallery.

It is not just because it is a urinal that this work is famous; it is because it is a urinal in an art gallery. So, even if you view yourself as a toilet, turn up to that job interview, that party, that date with trust in who you are and the value you hold, and the people who behold you will likely recognise your value – because you’re you.

This work reminds us that all confidence is – is a performance. It is through this performance that people will see your most valuable assets because you have walked in as if they have belonged there this entire time. The emphasis of your worries, therefore, should not rest on what you are (which is, by default uniquely you and more than enough). You should concern yourself instead with who you will boldly present yourself to be. It is this that will affect how people perceive you, and how they perceive your ‘ordinariness’, because you know that it too deserves to be enshrined upon a plinth in a nice space.

The Great Pyramid of Giza, built for Pharaoh Khufu, c.2580-2560BCE (4th Dynasty), limestone and granite, image: Nina Aldin Thune

The Great Pyramid of Giza, built for Pharaoh Khufu, teaches us to be careful of admiring symbols of success. As we see it, success is incredibly impressive; visually striking, this majestic structure erupts from the ground, and basks in the light of the sun, illuminating how we come to idolise ‘success’, without truly seeing what it might entail.

What the pyramid could be seen to symbolise are the superficial, but very human, trappings of success: wealth and power. We are only looking at a final product; we see the golden glitz and glam, without the (at times morally dubious) methods that require blood and sweat. We end up admiring but feeling hopeless, incapable of seeing this success for ourselves and hypnotised by these grandiose symbols, in tears.

We have actually been warned, for around 4,500 years, to bow to this kind of success; perhaps now is the time to rebuild this understanding by:

1. Recognising that the success we see is a finished product (the real work is hidden), and
2. Understanding exactly how the product came to be.

For most people, hopefully, we wouldn’t want to achieve the kind of success we see in this glorious structure, which may have been built through slavery. Even if it wasn’t, alternative and plausible theories suggest this symbol of success is the handiwork of 20,000 workers over 20 years.

True success, for an individual, cannot be defined by its final product, yet the world will dupe you into believing that it should be. Instead, we should recognise the Pyramids for what they are: a version of someone else’s success and power which took extensive teamwork and time.

With this in mind, if we are inspired by anything about the pyramids, it should be the process that led to them. Once attention is on this process we can better shape or evaluate the integrity of the result. We can ensure that we build upon a foundation of fairness, or we can see with clarity that what we have previously admired, was not worth admiring at all. For instance, slavery, worker exploitation, and colonisation have been used as a means to achieve success in many forms, but have left a legacy of pain, suffering, and systematic oppression that laid the foundation for much of the inequality in existence today; these processes were not imbued with good intentions.

In the same way, we can apply this thinking to individual, even our own, paths to success: How are we going about achieving success? What values drive it? Are we working in alignment with our own, or someone else’s ideal? If it is the latter, is what they’ve achieved underpinned by the same values as our own, or something that prioritises the end products of wealth and power over the beneficial effects of the process?

The brutal realities of these processes, and paths to wealth and power, are clouded by our preoccupation with the final result. It looks impressive – surely that is all that matters? Does it matter how it came to be when what now exists appears to be so phenomenal? Yes, the methods weren’t well intentioned, but now are we not ‘better positioned’ to go ‘good’? Such questions are precisely why something like this great pyramid can be so dangerous – what it has truly taken to achieve success is unclear, it is hidden.

We should remember our own power to reconstruct what success is for ourselves. What we see before us is unlikely the kind of success that will leave us feeling fulfilled- that will leave us wealthy; imagine if the essence of success lay entirely in how something was achieved and not in what the final product might look like. The potential for creative and beneficial change that becomes possible could be infinite – even when it seems at odds with how a wonder of the world came to exist.