Let’s begin with the obvious: Duchamp’s Fountain really was a urinal. Not a painting or sculpture of a urinoir – though the latter might raise interesting philosophical questions – but the real thing, a token of a particular type – there were many visually indistinguishable urinals that came off the same production line. And just as importantly, Duchamp had no involvement whatsoever in designing or making the urinal that was the raw material for his artwork. His contribution was to sign the urinal, and exhibit it as art.

Source: It is and it isn’t | Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ is not just a radical kind of art. It’s a philosophical dialetheia: a contradiction that is true

    • Nexius_Lobster@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      13·
      11 months ago

      the real question should be: does it count as “art” in the first place, which is a question the art community has been trying to find the answer to since the last 107 years since it’s been published.

      I know next to nothing about art history and art movements but what i find really interesting is how its able to divide the community in half (as evidenced by the ratio of upvotes to downvotes on this very post)

      It’s a piece of art that makes you ask what is art in the first place.Now I agree one could probably poop on a plate or tape a banana to an exhibit wall to raise the same question, but Duchamp’s works are iconic enough in the realm of modernism to warrant a discussion in the least.

      As for it being traditional art or not, This community was created to promote any and all art that is “non-digital” in nature, so at least fountain falls under that umbrella.

      • jayrhacker@kbin.social
        10·
        11 months ago

        It helps to contextualize this work in the movement it was part of: Dada. After the invention of photography the fine arts community was dealing with a crisis: painting was the primary form of art, and painting was meant to capture reality faithfully. Photography turns that on it’s head and we get the beginnings of modern art with the Ashcan school in 1900 which makes everyday life, including the lives of the less fortunate, an acceptable subject of painting (previously it was nearly all portraiture, landscape and scenes from history or fiction).

        Less representative paintings give way to abstract art, and just 19 years later we see that artists are pushing the bounds of what is considered “art”. Duchamp and company were asking the question of “what is art” with each new piece and the overall movement of Data and it’s descendants such as Fluxus has investigated that boundary for more than 100 years.

    • SynthuirEnglish
      3·
      11 months ago

      Indeed, the reason why this particular piece is more polarizing here than demonstrably more ‘modern’ works is because Fountain is famously regarded as one of the first examples of modern art.

      This post seems to provide a good example of why this community being named ‘traditional art’ and not ‘non-digital art’ is confusing.

      • Nexius_Lobster@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
        3·
        11 months ago

        that’s a good point. the words traditional being a direct contradiction to modernism didn’t occur to me until reading this comment.

        I don’t know if it’s possible to rename lemmy communities (since you’d have to change the url of the community, and if I only change the display name of the community, the discrepancy between that and the real name might be confusing)

        but if it was possible to truly rename this community I’d want a name that emphasizes what the community IS rather than what it isn’t (i’m against names like NON-digital_art or NON-ai_art) but at the same time it’s hard to find an umbrella term that includes all art but explicitly excludes the digital medium (maybe Physical_art? I don’t know if that’s better or worse than Traditional_art.)

        • celeste@kbin.social
          3·
          11 months ago

          I don’t know if there’s a term that can escape people misunderstanding it.

          Do people who didn’t originally understand how ‘traditional art’ was intended get ‘physical art’ easier? so many alternate terms imply things like a particular style or age of the work. physical is the most generic term, so that’s good, but the vibes are off for me lol. I’d get over it if others found it easier to understand.

          • Nexius_Lobster@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
            3·
            11 months ago

            but the vibes are off for me lol

            Couldn’t agree with you more. But In the last 1007 posts or ever since the community’s been founded, I’ve only noticed people getting confused 6-7 times in total. Here’s to hoping the sidebar + the pinned post in the top is good enough to prevent further confusion. I suspect most of it comes from people who are seeing posts from this community on the all section for the first time.