Marcel Duchamp He didn’t write his name on the urinals because he didn’t have the ability to create “real” art. In fact, gallerist and YouTuber James Payne Watch the new “Great Art Explained” video aboveDuchamp’s grandfather was an artist, as were three of his brothers, and he himself had acquired a remarkable talent for painting by the time he was a teenager. By 1912, in his mid-twenties, he had transcended convention so completely that his paintings baffled and infuriated people. Nude descending the stairsThe work was criticized by fellow Cubists as being “too futuristic,” and from then on his independence (and never-ending mischievous nature) defined his life and art.
In the same year, Duchamp, Constantin Brancusi, Ferdinand Léger He went to the Paris Aviation Salon. Seeing a propeller, Duchamp declared painting “outdated.” What artist could surpass the perfect appearance of the shapes before him? He got a job as a librarian and threw himself into reading about mathematics and physics.
This got him thinking about the power of chance, which Bicycle Wheel He painted it in his studio and turned it whenever he felt like it. It was what he would later consider his first “readymade” work, deliberately choosing to be “against the notion that art must be beautiful” and to be “a functional, everyday item, without any regard for good or bad taste”.
The famous urinal is fountainIt was after he moved from Paris to New York in 1917. Strictly speaking, he didn’t sign his own name there at all, but “R. MUTT” for Richard Mutt, a name partly inspired by comic books. Matt and JeffDuchamp loved it. And Richard “Urinal” is French slang for “rich ostentatious person” or “rich man’s bag.” Sold by a “friend of the lady” and hidden behind a curtain at its premiere show, the original, signed urinal was never seen again. But it sparked enough enduring curiosity that, nearly half a century later, a market has sprung up selling carefully crafted replicas of the sculpture. fountain The same is true of the other readymades. Anyone with a sense of humor, or a willingness to question the nature of art itself, as Duchamp did, cannot fail to notice the irony.
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Based in Seoul, Colin MaOnershall Writing and broadcastingHe has written papers on cities, languages, and cultures, and his projects include the Substack newsletter. Books about cities And books A city without a state: Walking through 21st-century Los Angeles. Follow us on Twitter CollinhamOnershall or Facebook.
