Slusarczyk on Duchamp 3: An Analysis of ‘Comb’

A Slusarczyk Shadow is a painting behind the painting. It is an artwork that is indicated by the part of the artwork that physically exists. In traditional art shadows were very simple. You simply extrapolated from the artwork you were presented with. If you had a portrait showing a person from the waist up, you extrapolated and added some legs. You imagine parts of the scene that do not exist physically.

Busts only ever show the person’s head. But if there is a head there must be a body, so the shadow of a bust is the body attached to that head. And there must be a body if there is a head. Heads do not float around on their own. If there is a head there has to be a body. The head implies the body, so we must add the body to the artwork.

Slusarczyk Shadows can be taken much further than that. People do not exist in isolation, like heads do not exist in isolation. If there is a person, there must be ground under their feet. If there is ground under their feet we must have walls if they are inside or the sky if they are outside. 

Shadows are subjective. Everyone sees them differently. All we have is a head so the person could be inside or outside so people have to choose on their own if the person is inside or outside. Some people will see the shadow inside, and some will see it outside.

Everything in art is subjective. But there always has to be something that is objective. Complete subjectivity is stupid because then people could see whatever they wanted. We have to have subjectivity around a central theme, and with shadows that theme is the artwork itself. The theme of a sculpture is that sculpture, and the theme of a painting is that painting. The artwork is the theme because everyone creates different shadows, but that artwork is always in the shadow as it exists physically. 

There are other ways modern art uses theme. This sculpture is an ordinary object that the artist has decided is art. It is an ordinary object, so it lived life as that object for a while. It only became art when the artist decided it was art.

The artist makes the art art, so the artist must be included in the art. The artist is in the shadow. We make a world around the object, and we put the artist into that world. The artist is in the shadow interacting with the object.

This is a comb. So we can have the artist using the comb normally in the shadow. We can have him brushing his hair. But that is not why he decided this object was art. All the readymades were made art because people used them in interesting ways. There are strange ways people interact with the objects turned into readymades.

The comb being used as a comb is not initially the important part of the shadow. The important part of the shadow is the artist standing there running his finger along the teeth of the comb.

Everyone does that. Give someone a comb and they run their finger along the teeth. Running your finger along the teeth of a comb is the best thing you can do with a comb. That is just how people interact with combs.

This object was chosen as an artwork because people interact with it in a weird way. It is not just that a few people interact with it in weird ways; everyone interacts with it in that same weird way. That is an idea that comes up over and over again if you talk about readymades. The readymades are ordinary objects that are used in unordinary ways.

Take the bottle rack for example. You interact with that object by oppressing a finger down on one of the spikes. You test how sharp the spike is. That is just what everyone does when they are put in front of some spikes. It is a natural reaction. If you see a spike you test it to see how sharp it is.

We run our finger along the teeth of the comb. That is just what you do when you are given a comb. That is what you do if you pick up a comb. If someone is holding a comb, they will run their finger along the teeth.

But we must remember that first this comb was used for its intended purpose. We must create a shadow of that as well. If you create shadows of an objects story, that is a type of shadow called a Slusarczyk Story. If we go backwards from the object, we get to the object being used as a comb. And the artist must be involved, so he is standing there brushing his hair.

But that story is long. It goes on for ages. The artist might have owned this comb for years, and he used it as a comb for that whole time. He brushed his hair when it was short, and he brushed his hair when it was long. We see years of the artist’s life through this one object, but we only see those years in relation to the object. We cannot extend the shadow and follow the artist out of the house and around town because this artwork is about the comb. We only see the artist when he is using the comb.

But we could extend the shadow a little bit more than that. If we put the comb in his bedroom we can see the artist living life in his bedroom. We can see the artist using the comb in the morning, using the comb in the evening, but we see more of his life because he is near the comb. But if the artist leaves the room, he steps out of the shadow.

This story extends all through the time the artist owned the comb. The comb is the theme, so the artist’s life is only relevant in how it relates to the comb. We cannot show his life before the comb, and we cannot show his life after the comb because those areas of his life are not included in the comb.

But the shadow initially is why the artist decided to choose the object as an artwork. He would never have chosen the object as an artwork if he had only ever used it as a comb. What would the point of that be? An ordinary object being used in an ordinary way is not interesting, so you don’t make that object into art. It is only when we use an ordinary object in an interesting way that that object is interesting enough to be art. 

What else happened in this object’s story? It would have been made in a factory, but that is not important because the artist was not in the factory. There would have been many people in the factory, but none of them decided to make the comb into art, so they are not important in a discussion of the comb as an artwork. The comb’s story starts when the artist buys it.

First it is on a shelf with loads of other combs or in a box with loads of other combs. It sat in that box for months and months. People would come along and pick it up and inspect it, but they always put it back in the box. But that is not important. That is not part of the comb’s story. The comb’s story starts when the artist comes into the shop. It starts when the artist picks up the comb.

And what does he do? He picks up the comb and runs his finger along the teeth. That is just what we do with combs. He runs his finger along the teeth, and it satisfies him, so he buys the comb. He hands over some money then he leaves the shop.

And now the comb’s story has really begun. The artist takes the comb home and uses it as a comb for years. But none of that is particularly important either. Even though it is not important, we can construct shadows around the comb. If the comb was in the artist’s bedroom, we can construct the bedroom around the comb. And we construct the bedroom how we want to construct it. I want the artist to be messy, so I put the comb on a desk covered with clutter, and the floor is covered with discarded clothes. 

But I only want the artist to be messy because I am messy. I put myself into the shadow, and that is the only way you can construct shadows. Slusarczyk Shadows make the viewer part of the art piece because they allow the viewer to construct huge sections of the artwork themselves. All the artist has done is given us a comb. We decided to put that comb in the bedroom ourselves. Then we decide to construct the bedroom around that comb. All we were given was a comb, but that comb indicated bedroom, so we constructed the bedroom around the comb. We constructed a shadow around the comb. Combs do not exist in isolation, so they have to be in some type of world, but it is left to us, the viewers, to construct that world.

But there are things a comb tells us about a person. If someone has a comb they are nice and neat because they keep their hair brushed nicely and neatly. So it would not make much sense for the artist’s bedroom to be messy if he was a neat person. So instead of putting the comb in a messy bedroom, we should construct a shadow of a clean bedroom. I have no clothes on the floor, and I have the top of the desk uncluttered. In fact, the comb is one of the only objects on that desk.

But the specifics are always created by the viewer. Even if we both put the comb on a desk, the chances that you and I will see the same desk are ridiculously small. I see one desk, and you see another desk. But you might not even put the comb on a desk. You might put the comb on top of a chest of drawers. You might not even put the comb in the artist’s bedroom. You might put the comb in the artist’s bathroom. And then the story you create is the artist combing his hair after he has had his daily shower.

The viewer is left to create much of the artwork themselves because the artist does not give us a lot of information in the artwork. The artist does not give us enough information in the artwork. All we are given is a comb. That is not enough. It is not enough to think about. It is not enough information to search for meaning. It is not enough information to be a valid artwork. And visual arts never had enough information in them. Paintings and sculptures were always far too small. The viewer has always had to add information to the artworks themselves. Shadows can be applied to every type of visual art ever made. The difference with found objects is now the artist is part of the artwork. Now the artist is part of the shadow.

So what does the artist do? We know he runs his finger along the teeth. That is why he chose this object as an artwork. But we know he does other things because he has chosen this object as an artwork. Because he has chosen it as an artwork, it is far too valuable to play with. The second he decides the object is an artwork, it completely changes. Now he cannot pick it up and run his fingers along its teeth. It is far too important to play with. It used to be nothing, but now it is important.

And that is what this style of sculpture is at the end of the day. It is just people deciding that normal objects are art. So those normal objects get elevated. We say that they are incredibly important. There are found objects that are worth millions of pounds. There are found objects that are the centerpiece at major galleries. The art world loves art like this for some reason. And that is strange because it is very much not the type of art that used to be traditionally good. Art used to be traditionally good if it was beautiful. That was how it all started anyway. Bigger things had to be interesting as well, but interest is a type of beauty because it captivates us. Emotion is important as well, but emotion is also beauty because emotion is beautiful, so at the end of the day the only thing that mattered in traditional art was beauty.

Found objects are art because they are intellectually beautiful. Ideas are beautiful because they make us feel things, and emotion is beautiful. There is nothing more beautiful than happiness. Sadness is also beautiful but in an entirely different way. So emotion is beautiful, and then ideas are beautiful because they make us feel beautiful things. Truth in particular makes us feel something. There is this strange satisfaction in truth. Truth makes us feel things that nothing else makes us feel.

But art was always beautiful like that. Art has always been the search for truth, so there has been truth in art since art was invented. So what does this type of sculpture do that makes it art?

I am not qualified to answer that question, but it does not matter what I think. We as a society have decided that this type of sculpture is art. We as a society have decided that this type of sculpture is important. Some found objects are some of the most famous artworks made during our lifetimes. My Bed is hugely important because it is hugely famous. Fountain is hugely famous as well. Society itself has decided that this style of art has value, so it has decided to preserve and revere this type of art.

So it is really the viewers that make this type of art art. It is the viewer who looks at this and thinks that it is art, so they make it art by calling it art. The galleries call it art when they display it, and the critics call it art when they write about it. So the art was not made when the artist decided that the thing was art, it was made art when society decided to call it art.

So art is decided by the viewer and not the artist. That means that this style of art wasn’t art until it was accepted as art. It wasn’t art until the majority called it art. And people still question it as art today. So if it is the viewer who makes stuff art, society has not decided for certain that this style of sculpture is art yet.

Biography: Dominik Slusarczyk is an artist who makes everything from music to painting. He was educated at The University of Nottingham where he got a degree in biochemistry. He publishes literature, nonfiction, and visual arts. He has published criticism on poetry, painting, and film. His fiction came 1st in The Cranked Anvil Short Story Competition and his poetry won The Letter Review Prize for Poetry. His full-length poetry collection Reaction is out now with Cyberwit.

Image: Unsplash, downloaded (https://unsplash.com/photos/silhouettes-of-people-in-a-dimly-lit-art-gallery-TKH9bKlEe84) 24. 2. 2026.

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