'Art' - and how to take the Piss...

[Mr T.]

'Shocking' urinal better than Picasso because they say so
By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent
(Filed: 02/12/2004)

In this strange world where babies are made in test tubes and people pay to drink water in restaurants, the result is perhaps not all that astonishing; a gentleman's urinal has been voted the single most influential work of art of the 20th century.

The white porcelain urinal, one of the very earliest pieces of conceptualism, shocked an unprepared world when Marcel Duchamp, the edgy French artist, stuck it in an exhibition in New York in 1917 and declared that it was art because he said so.


Marcel Duchamp's white porcelain urinal
64 per cent of those who answered voted for Duchamp's urinal

Yesterday, even the expert hired to explain the result of the poll that made it number one confessed that he was "a bit shocked": but more because Duchamp had conquered Matisse and Picasso than because the urinal - given the name Fountain by Duchamp - was unworthy of the honour.

The poll, carried out in advance of the Turner Prize next week, explains an awful lot about today's art.

The respondents were not a sample of the public but the 500 most powerful people in the British art world - artists, dealers, critics and the curators and chatterers in museums and galleries. Those asked to vote included Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, David Hockney, Charles Saatchi, and Charles Saumarez-Smith, the National Gallery's director.

Fountain, signed with the name R Mutt by Duchamp, was chosen as the most influential work by 64 per cent of those who answered, wiping the floor with Picasso's Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon (second place, 42 per cent), the starting point for Cubism and once held to be the first great masterpiece of modern art.

Not a single artist in the poll voted for the Red House by Matisse, placed fifth.

"Ten years ago Picasso or Matisse would have won. They were the twin kings of modern art but not any more it seems," said Simon Wilson, a former curator of interpretation at the Tate Gallery, hired to deconstruct the results by the Tate and Gordon's Gin, sponsor of the Turner Prize.

"The result is quite a shocker but I am not surprised. Duchamp is what this generation of artists is all about. It's about what they think is art and it's about what you get in the Turner Prize nowadays.

"Matisse's art is, above all, sensuous. Among artists now, art is expected not to be comfortable. It's expected to be at the edge and have political and moral messages."

Duchamp, the son of a lawyer from Normandy, was the Damien Hirst of his day. His revolutionary idea was to turn objects of everyday life into works of art with little or no modification. These works became known as "readymades".

Art could take any form and be made of anything, an idea that has been taken up with gusto by the likes of Hirst, with his pickled animals; Emin, with her unmade bed; and the new generation of video artists dominating the Turner Prize this year.

Duchamp's first "readymade" piece, in 1915, was a snow shovel. Soon afterwards he caused a furore in New York when he showed up at an exhibition held by the Society of Independent Artists, urinal under arm, intending to display it.

The show was an open exhibition and Duchamp, after paying his $6 entrance fee, could not be stopped. But some tried, including the president of the society who complained to the collector Walter Arensberg: "You mean to say, if a man sent in horse manure glued to a canvas that we should have to accept it?"

Arensberg replied: "I am afraid we should." And the remark was to prove a great harbinger.

Mr Wilson insisted that Fountain - named because it was not only watery but a satire on the fountains painted by the Old Masters - was a worthy winner.

He said: "I love it. It's got everything: rich metaphor, it's scatalogical, it breaks social conventions and it's very, very provocative."

Top five of the 20th century

1 Fountain by Marcel Duchamp (1917) Voted by 64% of poll

2 Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Pablo Picasso 42%

3 Marilyn Diptych by Andy Warhol (1962) 29%

4 Guernica by Pablo Picasso (1937) 19%

5 The Red Studio by Henri Matisse (1911) 17%

[Mdemon]

Taking the p*ss or what???!

[beanie]

http://www.outlawdivers.org.uk/fulls...tion=21&page=2

[Pigpen]

Originally Posted by Mr T.

'Shocking' urinal better than Picasso because they say so
By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent
(Filed: 02/12/2004)
Mr Wilson insisted that Fountain - named because it was not only watery but a satire on the fountains painted by the Old Masters - was a worthy winner.

He said: "I love it. It's got everything: rich metaphor, it's scatalogical, it breaks social conventions and it's very, very provocative."

Its a bog, for fu*ks sake !!

[D.D.J]

hi
not really my cup of tea, but i like drawing...i ve actually taken art as an a level. but non of my stuff is like that, don t worry

[Dinger]

I once went to the Tate Modern with a friend who was a former assistant Curator of the Tate and he took me on a 'tour' thing - what a pile of complete and utter bol*ox it is.

One of the pieces is an glass of water on a glass shelf and the artist writes in his diabtribe that it is not a glass of water it is an oak tree. My ar*e it is - I have Oak in my garden and it looks sod all like that.

Or the guy who puts all his clothes on in a small toilet and filmed it and called it art or the video of the clown jumping up and down saying no no no over again is wonderful crap. Some of them must be wetting themselves laughing. I know I would be.

Best thing about the trip was that I bumped into Seamus Heaney in the bookshop and he thought it was utter boll*x too.

Dinger

[Hoppy]

It really gets my goat this stuff, I wonder who the hell is laughing at who ?

Do they really get paid for some of this stuff ?

People like Chas Saatchi only fuel the boll*x thing by paying for it.

Rant over, coat on and leaving.

[Moray]

Originally Posted by D.D.J

hi
not really my cup of tea, but i like drawing...i ve actually taken art as an a level. but non of my stuff is like that, don t worry

I certainly hope not

[Bantam]

This would therefore make him a piss artist?

[The Purist]

The thing about 'conceptual' art is supposedly that the art is in the leap of imagination required to create the piece, not in the piece itself which is in fact merely there to document the conceptual leap behind it. Therefore the thing that is exhibited is just a representation of the art, not the art itself, and therefore is entirely reproducable without actually affecting the art behind it... hence it should have no value other than the intrinsic value of the components used to make it.

So the biggest piece of conceptual art must be the leap of imagination that Saatchi made when his warehouse of tat burnt down, claiming it was worth a fortune as it was a fine collection of art when it was really just a load of tat that someone sold him claiming it was art.

I still reckon those blokes who exhibited a gallery full of empty pedestals are the smartest cookies going - real conceptual art with none of that documentation bolox.