hi I'm Cara Smulevitz and this is Denise Rogers
we're both art history professors as you
know because one of us is your professor
and we're doing this little video to
introduce you to the number one artwork
from our formidable 5 project the
formidable 5 project is about five
really important artworks that the
concepts behind them will end up being
key for this entire semester so
basically it's 5 artworks where each one
can be kind of an example for a big idea
that will help you understand
contemporary art this first one that
we're going to talk about is by an
artist called Marcel Duchamp a Frenchman
who also lived in the United States it's
called the fountain
it's from 1917 before I go to it Denise
do you want to give them any info any
warnings, disclaimers? beauty is in the eye
of the beholder. excellent! okay that's
good so I'm gonna disappear us now if I
can I did it again see now we're giant
okay okay now we're hidden and here it
is this is why I asked Denise about the
warning because as you can probably see
this is a urinal although I got to tell
you I learned this in high school for
the first time and I had never been in a
men's bathroom and I thought it was a
tiny sink. I had no idea so you know
yeah yeah yeah so in case any of you are
in the boat that I'm in and have never
been in a men's room and seen a urinal
this is a urinal.  important
information. yes I have a son. oh yes okay
there you go
um so I'm gonna start I think by just
telling you why I think this is
important and then you want to say why
you think it's important? Cool. so I know
this is super weird that here you have a
urinal and it's signed with a name and
it's dated
it wasn't like used from the bathroom it
was just bought at a plumber's store and
then the artist signed a name on it and
put a date out of the way like you know
any artist might sign and date a
painting or a sculpture and then he
presented it as an artwork he's
basically taking something we would
never think of his art and saying I'm
going to treat it like art I'm going to
sign it I'm going to date it.
I'm gonna enter it in an art exhibition
and then I'm just gonna see... are people
gonna treat it like art? and did they? no
not at first. And then what? it was rejected. It was rejected
so it made  a point for Duchamp that the
people had limits to what they were
going to decide as art and then that
limit gave him something to like argue
against to say well why is this object
not art when other objects are? Right it
starts a dialogue about that question, what is art who determines what
art is and breaking with previous
traditions, no hands..
well, hands created it, but not his hands
that's not his name, and then putting it
on display and presenting it as art it
shifts from the actual material being
the artwork to the concept or idea
behind it so you said I'm going to
restate that because that I think is
exactly the point so the material is not
the thing that is  the artwork, its  the concept
behind it. and then what is the concept
behind it? good question. well if you you start out
with a common statement about art, art is
supposed to be beautiful even though a
lot of art isn't but beauty in and of
itself is subjective and so rejecting
traditional concepts of beauty and
shifting your way of thinking and being
able to recognize that it's open-ended
and it's based on the individual how
they determine if something is beautiful
so you can completely separate yourself
from the work of art and just discuss
the concept of art, beauty, expression, or
you can look at the work of art and
start to recognize how there are
different definitions of beauty within
quote-unquote artwork that
you don't typically see as beautiful or
anything you don't typically see so that
goes back to what you said as your
warning, art is in the eye of the
beholder.  I actually have a different
view of it a little bit I kind of think
that Duchamp wanted to pick the most
unbeautiful thing. because a urinal of
course is like you know nobody wants to
contemplate a toilet and so I think
you're trying to find something that
we're not going to say
oh it's beautiful therefore its art and
we're gonna say wait art doesn't have to
be beautiful? and then what does that
leave us with...and then we have to figure
that out. At least that's how I
don't know..I like that, I
like that he gives us this freedom to
use this piece to kind of rip apart all
the definitions of art that we might
Yeah! you're going back to we've been
conditioned to see certain things as
beautiful and so he deliberately like
you said he deliberately chooses
something that most people do not see as
beautiful.  excellent I think that is
exactly true so before we finish up with
our tiny video here the main concept for
this one has to do with "concept"-  that the
artwork is about the concept and what
does that mean and how does that change
what you think of as art so if you're
working on your group project for this
piece it's gonna be about that, right? in
some way I mean you'll be tracing this
notion of is art an idea, what does that
mean I think that a lot of people get
mad at Duchamp and I think he was
totally fine with that I think he was
trying to kind of like- that was the
point -yeah I think...
he wanted to disrupt...exactly so it's not
that he's trying to make us mad that was
you're right disrupt is the right word
so we could think about that disruption
of the rules of art yeah good okay well
there you have it now
go and look at something that's not a
toilet!
