The Tate Modern has one of my favourite pieces of Art on display, Marcel DuChamp’s Fountain, which is an ordinary urinal, that Duchamp then turned 90 degrees from it’s natural position and signed it “R. Mutt 1917″. It was part of his series of “readymades” ordinary, everyday objects that had at most, been slightly altered by the artist. He himself defined a readymade as “an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.”, although he also said “The curious thing about the readymade is that I’ve never been able to arrive at a definition or explanation that fully satisfies me.”
The Fountain isn’t the first readymade, but it’s probably the most famous – he submitted it anonymously to the Society of Independent Artists 1917 exhibition, where they claimed would exhibit any and all work submitted, only to have it rejected. He then submitted it a another gallery, not anonymously this time, and had it accepted.
Duchamp was, at the time, trying to get away from what he described as “retinal art”, reaching for something a little more conceptual in nature. The readymades themselves were selected on the basis of visually indifferent, presumably so as not to draw attention from the ideas and concepts he was trying to put forth. He was rejecting the notion that Art could be rigidly defined, or at the very least, trying to get the viewer to ask questions of themselves about what they thought Art was, and as you’ve probably guessed, if you’ve been following my definition of Art, I of course, see no problem with saying that this sort of thing is Art.
There is a danger, though, in allowing this sort of thing to be called Art, and that’s that other Artist will start producing similar things, and suddenly the Art world is full of Artists talking about what Art is, and wrenching their arms with all the patting themselves on the back, and saying very little that’s of any worth to a wider society. Don’t get me wrong: I like Duchamp’s work. I’m glad he made The Fountain. It has certainly done a lot to shape my thinking about Art. But I do think that we only need a few works like it in any given generation, and it certainly feels like we get a few more than that, these days.
[...] I’ve talked before about one my favourite works of art, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. So my obvious choice is [...]