- Why is this considered art?
Fountain is a readymade sculpture by Marcel Duchamp in 1917, consisting of a porcelain urinal signed “R. Mutt”. When explaining the purpose of his Readymade sculpture, Duchamp stated they are “everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist’s act of choice.”
Well, it is art because the artist chose to make it an artwork.
Duchamp’s main goal was to show that the artist had the intellectual power to choose what object becomes art and change its context. The important thing here is the artistic idea and not the object itself. And this became a big change in the history of modern art. What we choose to see as art can be art, it doesn’t mean that it’s good or bad, just art.
2.Ready to make? Readymade.
This work is one of what Duchamp referred to as readymades. It is a cheap postcard reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s early 16th-century painting Mona Lisa onto which Duchamp drew a moustache and beard in pencil and appended the title.
Secondly, that by cancelling the ‘useful’ function of an object it becomes art. Thirdly, that the presentation and addition of a title to the object have given it ‘a new thought’, a new meaning. Duchamp’s readymades also asserted the principle that what is art is defined by the artist. Choosing the object is itself a creative act, cancelling out the useful function of the object makes it art, and its presentation in the gallery gives it a new meaning. This move from artist-as-maker to artist-as-chooser is often seen as the beginning of the movement to conceptual art, as the status of the artist and the object are called into question. At the time, the readymade was seen as an assault on the conventional understanding not only of the status of art but its very nature.
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Nu descendant un escalier no.2) (1912) (source)
The painting depicts the mechanistic motion of a nude, with superimposed facets, similar to motion pictures. It shows elements of both the fragmentation and synthesis of the Cubists, and the movement and dynamism of the Futurists.
By living as a painter, sculptor, chess player and writer, a layered experiences made him able to change the meaning of art. Duchamp decided to call his chosen mass-produced objects made into artworks his readymades. And Dadaism made all of that possible. Without Dadaism, we wouldn’t have any conceptual art piece.
“The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”
Writing sources:
. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp
. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/marcel-duchamp-1036
. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/r/readymade
. https://www.britannica.com/art/ready-made