The Art World Is A Forever Changing System

This essay will demonstrate how two revolutionary artists, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage still play a significant role in contemporary art practice and theory today.

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 “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

Art is able to evoke different feelings and emotions to each person that sets their eyes on it. The act of ‘looking’ is simple, but a lot comes from it. Where the eyes are first drawn to, the duration that the eyes are focused on a specific detail, and the thoughts that flood one’s brain when viewing art is all significant. These actions say more than the piece itself, it reveals emotions of both the artist and the audience. Art can be expressed through infinite forms, but the underlying importance is not with the art itself. It represents a place in time, displaying what was noteworthy to an individual in their own life. It serves as a lasting creation representative of human imagination with the ability to bring out a multitude of emotions from whoever views it. When art is created it represents the creativity of the human mind compacted into a physical object. Art has little usage aside from pure observation, yet it has prevailed throughout time, showing its importance to humanity. Art provides a lens into humanity, showcasing the human ability over time. When studied through history, art is a view into the development of humans and their interests. Through something as basic as commonly using symmetry to transitioning to asymmetry, the European’s perspective following the Renaissance is revealed. The making of art is solely up to one individual and their creativity. It is the pinnacle of

Duchamp’s works are both seen as postmodern as they use postmodern conventions such as appropriation and parody (as seen in L.H.O.O.Q) and recontextualisation in ‘Fountain’ (above).

‘Impressionism’ was a derogatory term first used to mock Claude Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise, and other later paintings that were patterned after his revolutionary style. At a time when artists took great pains to make their artwork look as life-like as possible, the quick brushstrokes and blurry figures in Monet’s paintings looked anything but realistic to the art critics. Because of its focus on mental images, Impressionism later came to include not only visual arts, but also certain music as well. Debussy and Ravel are two of the most famous Impressionist composers, and our textbook states that what sets their style apart is that “instead of dealing with human emotions, [their] music evoked the atmosphere of nature” (p. 704). This type of

Duchamp once said, "An artist should be a destroyer of tradition." By this he believed a persons artwork should be different than any other, causing it to stick out dramatically.

Visual opulence, creativity, inimitable vision, and a style that is highly influential are the many characteristics of an admired movement in art history, that being of the Post-Impressionism movement (1875-1892). This movement, which was a by-product of the Impressionism movement, is the bridging gap between the two movements known as Realism and Expressionism. Post-Impressionism takes on some of the stylistic characteristics of these movements; however, it does not contain the all too glossy visuals of Realism or the heavily fantastic visuals of Expressionism, rather it is the intermediary of these two poles. My paper will discuss why this link was absolutely essential to the history of art movements, and I will be specifically using the

In David’s painting there is a clarity and crispness that is similar to a photograph, yet his figures maintain a baby like softness. Gerard’s implied texture of the clothes and environment are softer than David’s giving the painting a more realistic appearance. David and Gerard both show in these paintings that they have a very good understanding of human anatomy and form. The figures in both painting have a good sense of underlying structure and weight.

Through a formal analysis and investigation of the subject matter in Diane Victors, “Strip” (Image A) , “Tease” (Image B) and “Leda and the white backed vulture” (Image F) one will be able to see that, her choice of an unsettling and taboo subject matter supports the meaning behind her works. While in “The Butcher boys” (Image C), created by Jane Alexander, three monstrous figures sit on a wooden bench. These three deformed figures provoke feelings of alienation, distrust, anxiety, and curiosity while symbolising the culture of Apartheid. Whereas, Marcel Duchamp's form of art - the readymade- leaves viewers grappling with the conceptual idea instead of focusing on technical skill, in his work, “Fountain”(Image D). Benon Lutaaya uses the medium

The essays by Berger and Benjamin are similar in several ways in the sense that they follow a common theme and put forward similar arguments. Mechanical reproduction changed the way we view and experience art. Their perspectives on the reproduction of art changed our thinking and feelings for what it can bring.

The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even falls into the category of anti-art. It was a large-scale project unlike anything else. Duchamp wanted to move away from “retinal” art- art that appealed only to the eye- and create a new kind of art. He wanted to engage the mind instead of the eye, in ways that provoke the observer to participate and think. Duchamp wondered “Can one make works of art which

Since the beginning of art, typical mediums have consisted of oil paints, marble, pastels, and charcoals. As time has progressed, and aesthetics have changed, so has the extensive list of mediums found in art. One medium in particular, known as the use of “found objects” has become increasingly more popular since the days of the Renaissance. Found object art can be as straightforward as Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain,” which is a urinal fountain that is simply orientated sideways and signed; this, bordering the line between art and an object from everyday life, brings forth many questions and lots of public controversy. Art has always caused this same controversy, but one main argument frequently surrounding found objects is the extent unto which the piece must be abstracted or reincorporated in order to be considered “art.”

Marcel Duchamp was one of the sole creators of this divide in art. Fountain is a piece of art that challenged one’s mind to make one ponder on what art really was. Society and the world were still very much stuck in the old history and paintings of grandeur, and Marcel had his intentions set on changing the description of art that people have oh so precariously followed for centuries. Before Marcel Duchamp even existed on this planet, the term art has been taken for granted for thousands of years, because nobody had ever really questioned art until Duchamp produced his anti-art. Ukrainian businessman Victor Pinchuk says, “What is extraordinary about contemporary art is the energy - it has our energy. New energy. Pieces hundreds of years old are beautiful from an aesthetic point of view, but without our modern energy.” Art mostly comes from within the

In 1915 the concept of “readymade” art was 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 also considered a “readymade.” A “readymade” by Duchamp is “an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.” Duchamp produced many of these “readymades,” but it his readymade entitled Fountain that we will be discussing here. Duchamp’s Fountain originated from a urinal that he with two other friends purchased from a plumber, took to his studio, and turned it on its backside. He painted the pseudonym “R. Mutt” on

In a ‘tradition breaking spirit’ [D’Alleva, 2012], that characterised modernist artists, early in the twentieth century, Duchamp abandoned traditional ideas and techniques, to create a new kind of ‘art’, one that the idea behind a work of art is more important that its visual realization, the ‘retinal’. The ready-mades was the product of Duchamp’s questioning what art is.