Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)Fountain, 1917, Porcelain urinal, 24 × 14 × 19 in (61 × 35.6 × 48.3 cm) Photographed by Alfred Steiglitz
DESIGNATING AN OBJECT AS AN ARTWORK
Although an artwork is usually defined as a product of human agency, a number of modern artists have contended that any object whatsoever can be presented or designated as a work of art. Such objects are known as “readymades.”
The first appearance of this idea occurred in 1917, when Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) famously exhibited, or tried to exhibit, a porcelain urinal as a sculpture. The occasion was an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York, and the sculpture was submitted under the pseudonym “R. Mutt.” Even though Duchamp sat on the selection committee of the society, the work was rejected. Duchamp resigned in protest. The work was subsequently photographed in the studio of Alfred Stieglitz and became something of a cause célèbre when the New York Dadaist magazine The Blind Man published an editorial making a compelling case for the new art form: “Whether Mr. Mutt made the fountain with his own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view—created a new thought for that object.”
In general, this is the rationale used ever since by practitioners of this kind of art. For them, the intellectual act of recognition and designation is the making of the art. The form of readymade continues to have currency, most notably in the British artist Tracey Emin’s infamous 1998 work My Bed, which consists of the artist’s unmade bed and various artifacts and detritus from her bedroom.
Readymades are often combined within artworks, providing a bridge to the art of assemblage, the sculptural version of collage.
The very openness of the genre of readymades is also a considerable weakness. When anything or everything might be designated an artwork, the line between what is and isn’t art becomes confusing, and the means by which a viewer might engage and enjoy the art can become unclear.
See also: Conceptual Art on page 46; Dada on page 58
Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)
Fountain, 1917, Porcelain urinal, 24 × 14 × 19 in (61 × 35.6 × 48.3 cm) Photographed by Alfred Steiglitz
