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I think how much hatred and revulsion I feel looking at this is the brilliance here.
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this post was submitted on 30 May 2025
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Traditional Art
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From dabblers to masters, obscure to popular and ancient to futuristic, this is an inclusive community dedicated to showcasing all types of art by all kinds of artists, as long as they're made in a traditional medium
'Traditional' here means 'Physical', as in artworks which are NON-DIGITAL in nature.
What's allowed: Acrylic, Pastel, Encaustic, Gouache, Oil and Watercolor Paintings; Ink Illustrations; Manga Panels; Pencil and Charcoal sketches; Collages; Etchings; Lithographs; Wood Prints; Pottery; Ceramics; Metal, Wire and paper sculptures; Tapestry; weaving; Qulting; Wood carvings, Armor Crafting and more.
What's not allowed: Digital art (anything made with Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, Krita, Blender, GIMP or other art programs) or AI art (anything made with Stable Diffusion, Midjourney or other models)
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I think art depends a lot on context. It’s promoting something to you and asking you to respond to it, and how you respond to it depends a lot on who you are and what you think about.
This image makes me think about ecological destruction and the emptiness of capitalism, but I don’t think every person who looks at it feels despair - it probably depends on whether they spend time on a website with a community called FuckCars or not lol. It leans into a mixture of surrealism and realism. It’s interesting how she’s leaning into realism to kinda draw out that sense of disgust and revulsion. Waterbed by her seems to lean more into her softer surrealism, because she’s not wanting us to feel the same kind of uncomfortable.
Similar to the idea of “it’s just a typewritten letter,” I absolutely love Duchamp. I got to see his Fountain and one of his Wineracks on a tour of Europe. “It’s just a urinal.” But goddamn did I break down in tears. The Winerack was a lucky surprises (I saved a pesky in-law from causing an international incident there lol).
It’s art because he took it out of context and told us to think about it. He said, “maybe everything is art or nothing is. What do you want to do about it?”
I'm extremely interested about the nature of the potential international incident...
And while Winerack is a great similarity to the typewritten letter, it feels not unlike modern day AI art plagiarism to me. He literally bought the thing in a shop and then displayed it with his name on it!
And he did so to enter it into an art exhibition under a different name as an intentional statement. That art is defined by the agency and choices of the artist. Reading on it is very interesting. There's a ton of meaning that was brought into existence just by the simple act of Duchamp choosing to treat the urinal as a piece of art. He actually modified it before choosing to enter it into the exhibition that suppressed its display. The Fountain was lost for a while, the kerfuffle made Duchamp take the decision to quit from the exhibition's board, as he was part of it. There are conspiracy theories that it was actually by a female friend who went under the R. Mutt pseudonym. Then the story reached high class society. It went missing again—and to this day—but several reproductions were ordered to Duchamp from art collectors. Since then there have been hundreds of interventions and reproductions, a whole century of sculptures and discourse and arguments and philosophical debate.
Because Duchamp once chose to treat a urinal as art.
When you say modified it, you mean he rotated it and signed it with a marker?
I can understand that it is influential due to subverting the norm and because we are having this conversation about it. To me, it loses something when it can literally just be replaced by anything similar. Example, that banana on a wall that sold for millions. There are 8 copies of "Fountain" and all are considered original. People piss in it and also unironically call that art.
I tend to agree with Greyson Perry on the matter - "I find it quite arrogant, that idea of just pointing at something and saying 'That's art.'"
There aren't 8 copies. There are hundreds. Those are just the full sized ones Duchamp made, and most he did make them from fiber glass, glazed ceramic and other materials, not store bought. There are dozens of miniatures, interventions and reinterpretations in dozens of different materials and finishes. Paintings, abstracts, photographs, deconstructions, etc.
I do agree that just pointing at something and saying that's art doesn't make it art. But Fountain is categorically not that.
Well I wouldn't say categorically, as otherwise there wouldn't still be discussions like this!
Though I take your points and there is certainly something to be said about the actual production of such items. I was speaking mainly on Winerack as I know that was a "readymade" but didn't know much about Fountain before today and it certainly is interesting reading. I was under the impression that they were also simply porcelain urinals bought as is.
It doesn't matter if it was readymade or not. Only the original urinal was bought from a hardware store. The point that Duchamp is trying to convey—and I would think it is similar with Winerack and Banana duct-taped to a wall—is that art is not the object itself. It is not pointing at an object and saying “that's art”. The point is that art is what the artist makes, takes, extracts, transforms, then presents, in such a way that says or conveys a meaning to other people. An urinal, a winerack, a banana, a pile of garbage, 175 pounds of candy, a hat rack, or a spade, ordinary objects devoid of context say nothing until a person takes them and manipulates them into something that makes the object scream “look at me! now think about it”. It is the artist's choices, human intention and action, that imbues objects with meaning and turn them into art. Often times the presentation is not accidental, but it was the result of thinking long and hard about how to best communicate the point the artists wants to make. The urinal could've been presented in its ordinary day-to-day form, but the orientation, the graffiti, the pieces that were removed that come with urinals, even the height at which it is supposed to be presented are intentional. The art is not the object, but the choices made by the artist.
Extraordinarily wealthy spoiled fourteen year old being chaperoned walking around by yours truly and a similarly “prone to accidents” ex. Walking around bored with their head buried in their phone. Last minute shirt grab as they walked around the museum into an unroped off sculpture because it was a tiny modern art museum in Rome, not the kind of one that expects American teenagers.
Ooof… I’m not team plagiarism though. Was it old? Was it attributed?
By AI plagarism I just mean that there is a similar level of effort and thought that goes into someone typing a prompt into an AI image generator and getting output that uses another artist's work. Maybe more even. Buying a mass produced item, signing it and saying you made art is very much the "you made this? I made this" meme.
Yes, was immediately thinking of Duchamp as well 😸:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)