Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain.
With the idea I had to pretend that objects are different things, I have been researching Avant-Garde pieces for inspiration. One that kept coming up for me was Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, this led me to want to discuss perceptions of art in my show as well as people. To me the 1917 piece is simply a urinal recycled into a fountain, it’s good that Duchamp was keeping it green, but it ain’t art (to me). he was denied a spot at the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York even though they said that all artist’s work will appear as long as they pay the fee. On the other hand some artists have claimed Fountain is a landmark of Avant-Garde art.
And it isn’t just this piece that has had me wondering, I have recently watched the Marina Abramovic documentary The Artist is Present and although I count myself as a bit of a fan there were some pieces that made me question, especially when she would explain what the purpose for these pieces were, a lot of the time I was scratching my head and wondering why.
As Marina says in the trailer “only one question I haven’t heard in 10 years, ‘why is this art?'” – How has no one ever asked her that in 10 years?
Leave a Reply