Is This Art?

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Originally Posted by Miriel

I never ever said that art can't make a statement. I think that most GOOD art, is the kind of art that does have some sort of meaning outside just the aesthetic value of the piece. But the toilet was ONLY a statement. It wasn't a inspired piece of sculpture or a painting, or even a photograph. It was simply a toilet, and it was simply a statement. I find nothing artistic about the toilet, although I hear the statement loud and clear.

I am a Fine Arts student btw. And of course, all this is just my opinion. I qualify art a lot differently than some of my art professors. I've had a photography professor who has claimed that some of my photography work didn't qualify as art because it wasn't dark and painful enough. And according to her, art can only be something that was inspired by hurt or pain. Screw her, I say! :p But yeah, I don't think that toilet is art, and nothing can convince me otherwise.

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I agree that you didn't say that art didn't make a statement. I think however that I would like to argue that the toilet is more than a statement. My stance is that the "Fountain" has the potential to be a piece of Art for the following reasons:

1. The power of the Artist to make it art...
(and not everyone is an artist; Duchamp was a well known 'professional' artist well received for his amazing paintings so he didn't just do this out of the blue. He was respected.)

2. The power of the insitution...
(The gallery and institutional setting transforms this specific article into an object of contemplation that is inseparable from the idea.)

3. The power of semiotics...
(The object and the idea are inseperable. Think of this specifc urinal (dated and titled) and you think of Duchamp and the context of this urinal) (This is also the idea I was trying to explore in the previous post).

4. The power of aesthetics...
(Do you preffer smooth and curvey? or jagged and rough? Mass-produced objects were idealy designed to attract human interaction... similar to art (though art also has the power to repulse)...where as mass-produced obhects must always look good for consumption purposes.

5. The power of function...
Communists had expressed the necessity of art to be useful... So it seems ideal to create a functional object that is also beautiful and artful.

6. The power of oppinion...
Even if I don't think it means art that doesn't mean someone else doesn't. Since art is all and always arguable I can only admit that objects are both art and not art simultaneously. Art only exists in the mind so must have multiple truths. (If Art is art sometimes but not all the time does that still make it art?)

7. The power of market...
As soon as someone is willing to pay for it under the proposed conditions it becomes so. Money buys art; no... money makes art. A market makes art. That urinal... that specific urinal (check out an essay on the aura of objects ... Baudilliard I think) is endowed with value.

I think in the end the problems and issues in art at that time inspired Duchamp to make specific descisions to pick this object. The society around him inspired him to preform in this manner.

Allow me to make a comparison to a field you're familiar with. How inspired can a photograph be in comparison? With a photograph you have the ability to change the lighting and how the image looks but you can't change the object (well you can but allow me to refer to automatic/instant photography; still life), it already existed you're only clicking a button. There's no manual involvement(hands on creation making the actual image; the camera made the image), there's not even a signature on it. Similarily Duchamp is only manipulating the object as necessary and within the boundaries provided.

PS > Miriel

I understand what you mean about your prof. I find the big problem right now with a lot of educational staff is that they are they came from a generation defined by style. We still are. Artists have a tendency to focus on one problem or one style... usually are unflexible. They master one medium (possibly dable in others) but tend to be either a painter, a sculpture... then they're either an expressionist... or a conceptualists... so the students are suffocated by a narrow oppinion.



I'm sure you make beautiful photographs.

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Originally Posted by Hsu

I think it's the kind of art that people pretentiously call art and then when they get refuted by others they give long-winded pretentious explanations about how art is something something but by then I've fallen asleep.

Then they throw their beret on the ground in frustration and go to the coffee house to vent in the form of beatnik poetry and a cop picks me up because I fell asleep on the street for the third time and he says if it happens again he's going to put me in holding for a day and give me a ticket.

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No.

Anything and nothing can be considered art. It all depends on the context and your own perceptions and opinions.

No matter what your perceptions or opinions; a picture of a urinal with your name scribbled roughly on it is not art.

Hey if the guy who made that poured his heart and soul into fullfilling his passionate feelings about urinals by calling that art. then let it be art.:)

That particular peice is of the Dada movement. Which spawned such things as someone drawing as a moustache on the Mona Lisa.

The idea behind Dadaism was to mock art.

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Originally Posted by Wikipedia

According to its proponents, Dada was not art — it was "anti-art". Dada sought to fight art with art. For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art were to have at least an implicit or latent message, Dada strove to have no meaning — interpretation of Dada is dependent entirely on the viewer. If art is to appeal to sensibilities, Dada is to offend. It is perhaps then ironic that Dada became an influential movement in modern art. Dada became a commentary on order and the carnage they believed it wreaked. Through this rejection of traditional culture and aesthetics they hoped to destroy traditional culture and aesthetics.

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Marcel Duchamp presnted a kind of art that was not art when he lived! But yes it is art!

"Fight art with art"? Piss off! He was just crappy and pretended it was the soppy form of art that has become known as "modern art" (the modern must mean rubbish) so that nobody would laugh at his pitiful attempts at creativity.

aww gawd, art. I could pull a better masterpiece out of my ear.

Well, if that's art then so am I. ;D I mean, why not? And nothing wrong with everything in the world being art. Art in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

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Originally Posted by Quin 'n' Tonic

"Fight art with art"? Piss off! He was just crappy and pretended it was the soppy form of art that has become known as "modern art" (the modern must mean rubbish) so that nobody would laugh at his pitiful attempts at creativity.

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As Chemical said, he was a respected and talented artist.

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Originally Posted by Laugh at face of Danger

aww gawd, art. I could pull a better masterpiece out of my ear.

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Then do it.

Respected by fools, and talented to the talentless.

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Originally Posted by Quin 'n' Tonic

Respected by fools, and talented to the talentless.

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QFT

Art is a crock of [img]/xxx.gif[/img][img]/xxx.gif[/img][img]/xxx.gif[/img][img]/xxx.gif[/img]. I could take a massive dump, and some asshole with a bachelor's degree would call it art.