R. Mutt, 1917- Erin Suh
If I asked you all to think of a great work of art, I’m sure many of you would picture da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, van Gogh’s Starry Night, or maybe one of your personal favorite works. For me, however, the first thing that comes to mind is Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. From the name, you’d probably expect a grandiose depiction of some sort of water-spewing contraption. You definitely wouldn’t expect a urinal. Fountain is just that. It is a legitimate, porcelain urinal bought by Duchamp from J.L. Mott Iron works on New York’s fifth avenue.
If you don’t believe me, you can go see it for yourself in the Museum of Modern Art. However, I can tell you from experience that the trip is probably not worth it because you could walk into any men’s bathroom and see something of the same effect. The only artistic liberty taken by Duchamp is on the left side of the urinal where he signed R. Mutt, 1917 in black. Let there be no confusion: I really hate this so-called ‘work of art”.
But, I would like to explain why this unconventional work has made such an impression on me and how it has changed my perspective on the importance of art.
My mom is probably laughing to herself in the back of the auditorium over the fact that I am talking about appreciating art when for years, she couldn’t even suggest going to a museum without me groaning. I’m not exactly a “stop and smell the roses” type of person, so spending hours staring at lifeless sculptures or paintings never really appealed to me.
But the summer before my Junior year, I took a four-week class called New York in Art and Film that altered the way I viewed art. My professor took us through a brief art history course where he challenged us to find significance in art by connecting it to its place in history and the artists’ intentions. Little by little, I saw myself opening up to these new ideas. I began to see how Thomas Cole’s landscape paintings were more than just depictions of nature. They embodied his romantic ideals that valued unspoiled wilderness and early American sentiments of freedom.
The abstract-expressionist works of Jackson Pollock and de Kooning were not merely mindless distributions of paint. Rather, they symbolized liberation and unbridled expression in the paranoia swept post war years of the 1950s.Those all seemed like perfectly reasonable concepts to me, but it was our discussion on Duchamp and the readymade movement that frustrated me the most.
In the years surrounding World War I, a new artistic movement called DaDa grew out of disillusionment with traditional aesthetic and repressive values. These artists sought to transcend those conditions through art with shock value. They wanted to create work that made people uncomfortable and drew out visceral reactions so people questioned whatever conventional notions they held.
Duchamp took this idea beyond painting through “readymades.” Instead of traditional mediums such as paint, Duchamp presented objects as art. Like the urinal, they were often common and mass-produced. If his only objective was to make people mad through this statement, he was successful. But he did more than that.
Duchamp took the artistry away from the artist’s ability to create something, and instead put it in choosing the work and forcing it to be seen in a different way-- what he called quote “creating a new thought for the object.” He made people question what constitutes art, and how putting something in the context of a gallery alters the way that people perceive objects. It was these early pieces that laid the groundwork for conceptual art, a new way of thinking about art by meaning rather than visuals. His influence can be seen in artists from Andy Warhol to performance artist Marina Abramovic.
Personally, Duchamp’s art is not my taste. That being said, I know that if I had not learned about his work, I would not be able to appreciate the art I do like. That would be a shame. To me, art is important because it is innate and universal. Sometimes there are no words for why we are drawn to certain works, and there is no special knowledge required to form an opinion about a piece. Every time we look at a work of art, we are seeing the world from someone else’s perspective.
The best art expresses something about the culture or time of the artist and challenges you to broaden your mind. If you have not already, I hope you are all able to grow your own appreciation of art. Walk through a gallery, spend a day in a museum, or even follow the Met or Art institute on Instagram. If you see something you like or even something that seems weird, look into it. You never know how something can change your perspective.