Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain Essay - 1784 Words

Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain by Sarah Shea HUMN406-01 Professor Nelson Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain People often ask what constitutes good art. Who decides whether or not a piece is art and whether it is good art or not? Marcel Duchamp challenged popular notions of his day about what art actually is. Duchamp, a French artist living in New York at the turn of the century, believed that it was up to the artist to determine what art is. Duchamp is most famous for a type of sculpture he created called â€Å"readymades†1. Readymades are ordinary functional household objects that have either been joined to other objects, or chosen to stand alone as sculpture. Examples of his readymades include a coat hanger nailed to the floor of his studio, a hat†¦show more content†¦There was much ado over these happenings. Articles appeared in major newspapers regarding it, but still no one knew who Richard Mutt was. An article also appeared in The Blind Man, an art journal Duchamp himself published. The anonymous author of the article defended the Fou ntain as art and went on to say â€Å"The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges. 3 This was the early 1900’s, so at this time the idea of â€Å"modern art† was still fairly new. People were starting to get use to it, but were not comfortable enough to be introduced to something such as Fountain. A bathroom fixture, especially a urinal, was considered too inappropriate, and was even said to be immoral. In that same article in The Blind Man, the author defends Fountain on this matter by saying, â€Å"Now Mr. Mutts fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bath tub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers show windows.† This is a very true statement; after all, bathtubs are not considered immoral are they? However, it being a urinal, and because of its reference to unpleasant bodily functions, it may seem inappropriate to have to study and examine it for any period of time, like art is suppose to b e studied. This is certainly valid reasoning. Perhaps, however, because the urinal was flipped onto its back, and called â€Å"Fountain† rather than â€Å"Urinal†, it is divorced from the whole bathroom scene, 3 Marcel Duchamp himself mostShow MoreRelatedA Comparison Of Marcel Duchamps Fountain, And The Physical Impossibility Of Art1870 Words   |  8 Pagesfaultless.† In art, the striving for perfection has always been changing back and forth in a continuous cycle between realism and impressionism. Artworks that point to this idea include Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, and Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. Through Duchamp’s work, the viewer gets a face-to-face interaction with something that is not only unpleasant to see in a high-status establishment, but is not considered â€Å"proper†. He has imposed his artisticRead MoreReadymade Art Essay1113 Words   |  5 Pageswas introduced by Marcel Duchamp when he took an ordinary snow shovel and painted the title In advance of the broken arm. He had previously turned a wheel up-side down and attached it to a stool, creating a piece he called Bicycle wheel. This was a lso considered a â€Å"readymade.† A â€Å"readymade† by Duchamp is â€Å"an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.† Duchamp produced many of these â€Å"readymades,† but it his readymade entitled Fountain that we will be discussingRead MoreMarcel Duchamp, Fountain1213 Words   |  5 PagesMarcel Duchamp | Fountain â€Å"All in all, 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 qualification ..† Do you know, which artist could have said this? That was a citation of Marcel Duchamp, one of the most important artists of the 20th century. In the next few minutes I will give you some informations about the person, who said this quite interesting words. Duchamp‘s life Read MoreMarcel Duchamp And John Cage1574 Words   |  7 PagesThis essay will demonstrate how two revolutionary artists, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage still play a significant role in contemporary art practice and theory today. During the early 20th century, Marcel Duchamp was influenced by the emerging artistic movements such as Dada and Cubism. He experimented with Cubism briefly and attempted to capture time and motion in a cubist style painting. He endeavoured to â€Å"detheorize’ Cubism in order to give it a freer interpretation’. Inspired by his time lapseRead MoreCommentary On The History Of Communication Design788 Words   |  4 Pagesof the past which previously had been art’s intention. The first image I propose for the exhibition is of Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 ‘readymade’ Fountain. Fountain is perhaps Duchamp’s most famous work and one of the defining pieces of art from the 20th century. In 1917, to have a urinal, lay flat with only a signature was certainly not considered ‘art’. It was the most famous of Duchamp’s ‘readymades’, which took an established functional object and claimed it as the artist’s own, perhaps due toRead MoreThe Impact Of Wwi For Artists Paul Nash And Marcel Duchamp Essay1049 Words   |  5 PagesResearch Essay Impact of †¨WWI for artists-Paul Nash and Marcel Duchamp As a number of leading artists got involved in the War, most of the art campaigns stopped. Individual artistic creations became less radical and started to step down from abstraction to concrete representations. In particular, the program in which the government appointed the artists as war correspondents has resulted in some of the most exceptional artworks of this century. This is, perhaps, because the artists have been exposedRead MoreThe Developments Of The Twentieth Century Essay1603 Words   |  7 Pagesmedium-specificity also questioned society as to what defined art? Artists approached these shifts in modernism by embracing and accepting the modernizations in the world. These new accommodations of the world are seen in the works of art by Marcel Duchamp, with his Fountain, Andy Warhol’s 100 Cans, and Robert Morris Untitled. Artists would be incompatible with these developments if approached with rejection and reformation. In the following years after WWI, Europe was manifested by years of upheaval andRead MoreThe Art Of The Readymade Essay1816 Words   |  8 PagesAlongside this process is the second factor which is the artists own personal experiences that accompanies and influences the readymades purpose. The process and influence from personal experiences are evidently applied to readymades including Marcel Duchamp’s work Fountain, 1917 and Tracey Emin’s work My Bed, 1998. These readymades are considered art as this process and experience becomes the pivotal point in the development of art shifting and redefining the traditional definition(s) of what consists asRead MoreDada Was A Radical And Cynical Artistic Movement1555 Words   |  7 Pagesmonetary value, and no propensity to be sold. Marcel Janco’s collages made of found objects such as wire, thread, and other pieces of everyday waste presented art made from literally worthless materials. Performance art and the infamous ‘Dada gesture,’ such as Benjamin Pà ©ret insulting a priest were inherently unsaleable. Where art had been highly skill-based and works labour-intensive, Dada presented works that required low to no skill or labour. Duchamp’s Readymades encapsulated this approach, in whichRead MoreDadaism Art763 Words   |  4 Pagesart that makes people think about the question what is art in a way that other art styles do not. The point of Dada is to confuse the person looking at the art. The three Dada artists that stick out to me the most are Marcel Duchamp, Theo Van Doesburg, and Francis Picabia. Marcel Duchamp was raised in a family of artists which influenced him to become an artist. Eventually Duchamp got older and he went to Paris to studied Cubism, Fauvism, and Impressionism. At the age of 25 he met an earlier Dadaism