The Arts Industrial Revolution

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Marianne Palmer

Professor Torda

Capstone Planning and Research

Marcel DuChamp: Art’s Industrial Revolution

Just as the Industrial Revolution transformed the world of modern man, Marcel DuChamp transformed the world of Modern Art. In the mid-1800s, art shifted from the classical to the modern as new artists and scientists emerged, spouting different ideas and beliefs. Prior to the Industrial Age, art was considered classical and commissioned by the wealthy and the church. God was the measure of all things, and therefore, could be found in nearly all pieces at that time. Styles changed, but that mutual subject–God–remained. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, wealth shifted to big business. God was questioned and man became the measure of all things. Artists were no longer commissioned solely by the church; businesses commissioned artists as well. In addition, inventions were making the life of an artist easier [1] . The Pre-Modern Age was upon the art world and with it, a series of new movements dawned [2] . Marcel DuChamp was among the experimenting artists of the early 20th Century. He shifted art’s subject matter yet again, focusing not on "man" but on the "object". Thus was born DuChamp’s Readymades [3] . Although Duchamp’s contemporaries initially criticized and ridiculed his works, DuChamp’s genius grew irrefutable when common place objects became art. The impact he had—the perceptions and claims he construed—first influenced his peers, then reinvented the techniques used to represent and market artwork, and eventually altered the manner in which art is viewed, accepted, and utilized.

An Art-Made Man: How 1800s Art Influenced DuChamp

As the emphasis moved from God to man and Modern Art was born, styles also underwent a transformation. Experimenting artists of the early 1800s began testing the limits of their discipline. In 1839 Eugene Chevruel changed the concept of color when he created the color wheel, which consisted of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors placed side by side. As a result, Georges Seurat experimented with pointillism [4] in his renowned piece Sunday on the Grande Jatte [5] . The Fauvist movement [6] made good use of Chevreul’s color theory through its use of intense animalistic colors combined with short harsh brush strokes. It was Pablo Picasso who stood as proof to Chevreul’s color theory when in 1901 to 1904 he suffered the loss of a close friend. The paintings he produced during those three years of mourning, known as Picasso’s Blue Period, utilize only shades of blue and convey feelings of depression and despair.

Just as Eugene Chevreul was changing color perception, Paul Cezanne was simplifying the concept of shape, earning him the title "the Father of us all" [7] and the founder of Cubism [8] . Cezanne contended that any subject could be broken down into three different forms: the cone, the cube, and the sphere. Picasso exploited this theory; some of his most famous paintings are classified as Cubism. Piet Mondrion took Cezanne’s theory to the next level, eliminating all shapes except the cube, and he painted only in linear, horizontal, vertical, and ninety degree angles.

Modern Art became an ever-changing entity as many other artists used their works to either voice an opinion, expose hypocrisy, or raise a new awareness. They had come to believe it was their duty to make a statement, whether it addressed convention, social inequity, aesthetics, political unrest, religion, or morality: "I was interested in ideas, not in visual products. I wanted to put painting again in the service of the mind" [9] . Modernism was now an expression of the mind and of truth, and due to the tumultuous times, that truth was often rooted in problematic issues of society.

The Dadaist movement was a prime example of this. Surprisingly, Dada was an anti-art movement that flourished during WWI. It supposedly originated during a meeting in a bar in Zurich, Germany. The men were conversing about the war. They questioned the meaning of life and discussed its randomness. One minute a family could be eating dinner and the next, they could be lying dead under the rubble of a bomb. How mind boggling is that—to die without warning? One of the men opened a French-German dictionary and stabbed a knife into the center. The knife severed the word "Dada" which means "hobby-horse". It was a random stab, impaling a random word, with no premeditation or planning, just like the war. The men became the Dadaists and the movement flourished despite its original premise: There is no point in an artist trying to find order or meaning amidst the chaos of war. Order did not exist, randomness did. The stabbing knife proved that, and so, "it was seized upon by the group as appropriate for their anti-aesthetic creations and protest activities, which were engendered by disgust for bourgeois values and despair over World War I" [10] . Dada rejected moral, social, and aesthetic code. DuChamp’s random Readymades embodied Dadaism.

Marcel DuChamp embraced the idea of using his work, specifically influenced by Cubism and Dadaism, to broaden the pallet by introducing commonplace items, or Readymades, as the subject of those works. In so doing, DuChamp brought to light another truth: "There has never been any value in the proposal that the harder an artist works, or the more skillfully detailed his craft, the better the work of art in the end" and "Some of the greatest painters in the world … produce art of no ultimate value" [11] . DuChamp successfully broke the labor-to-product connection that artists of the day already found to be false.

The Fountain of Knowledge

In order to further understand the importance of DuChamp’s Readymades, one must understand how the Readymade came to be. Born in Normandy, France in 1887, Marcel DuChamp quickly rose to prominence in the art world. By 1915 he was living in New York and renowned for his controversial painting Nude Descending a Staircase [12] . He co-founded the Society of Independent Artists and was a board member, questioning the parameters outlined by the board when putting together the Society’s first art exhibition in 1917. There are two schools of thought concerning what transpired next.

One assertion is: Marcel DuChamp objected to the idea that anything could be submitted for exhibition so long as the artist paid the submission fee. Whether a practical joke or a testimony to the board’s absurd reasoning, DuChamp decided to purchase a porcelain urinal, turn it on its side, name it Fountain [13] , sign it under the assumed name "R. Mutt 1917", and send it to the Society of Independent Artists to display in their show. DuChamp was present when the content of the box was previewed. The art directors were appalled by the "unmentionable object" which they later labeled "bathroom appliance" [14] . They had reacted just the way DuChamp felt they should. He had made his statement: not everyone is an artist, perhaps the reason for the name "Mutt". Ironically, however, Marcel DuChamp began to question his own supposition: "In the chain of reactions accompanying the creative act, a link is missing. This gap, representing the inability of the artist to express fully his intention, this difference between what he intended to realize and did realize, is the personal ‘art coefficient’ contained in the work." [15] Maybe the art board was correct: anything can be art if it makes a statement. Even as DuChamp came to this conclusion, the board was rethinking its decision to accept all submissions; they had to draw the line somewhere. An hour before the show opened, the decision was made to remove the piece. A short time later, DuChamp anonymously defended Fountain in The Blind Man, a New York publication with which he was affiliated. In the article, he claimed Fountain was art because he chose it, and in so choosing it, he had "created a new thought for that object" [16] and the value of that thought superseded the premise that anything artistic must be hand crafted. The idea that "it is art because I chose it" was an entirely new concept. In the years to come, it shaped the manner in which new pieces were created.

Others speculate that the story unfolded a different way. They contend that DuChamp suggested that all art should be accepted in the Society of Independent Artists first show, that there should be no jury, so long as the artist paid the $6 submission fee.

The Independents congratulated themselves on championing all that was new and progressive in art, and to ensure openness to the new, they agreed to the idea of one of their directors, DuChamp himself, that anyone who paid a $6 fee should be able to show in their inaugural exhibition. This meant that technically there were no grounds to refuse the mysterious R. Mutt’s last minute entry. [17] 

Art historians agree on the rest of the story: the board did not follow its initial guidelines and, at the last minute, removed the urinal from the exhibition. This opened up a media avenue for DuChamp to promote his work. In either scenario, DuChamp found, or perhaps knew from the outset, that the negative publicity Fountain received served him better than any positive critique could have. People, whether revolted or intrigued, were talking about Fountain and thus, the Readymade–an entirely new art form–was introduced to the world of Modern Art.

A Readymade piece is an everyday item that the untrained eye does not view as aesthetically pleasing. The artist makes little to no alterations to the object selected. DuChamp relied heavily on negative association when choosing these objects. One purpose for creating these pieces was to drive art critics crazy; the more notoriety the Readymades received, the more permanent their effect. The truth behind his work is satirical; each piece is a parody. DuChamp admitted this to a newspaper journalist: "People took modern art very seriously when it first reached America because they believed we took ourselves very seriously. A great deal of modern art is meant to be amusing." [18] Art historians attempted to create meanings for each piece. They attempted to persuade DuChamp into revealing the meaning of his works. His reply was, they do not have a meaning: "I was poking fun at myself most of all" [19] . His goal was to evoke a reaction from his viewers by supplanting the original function of an object with an alternative, but the alternative had to be decided upon by the viewer. If someone did not like his work, or said it should not be art, he or she still thought about it. One does not have to admire something in order to form an opinion.

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

Fountain became the fountainhead of the Readymade movement, and is arguably DuChamp’s most famous piece. Yet when one looks at a urinal, it is unlikely to arouse admiration. In fact, most individuals have a rather undesirable reaction to urinals: they are often dirty receptacles for men’s bodily excretions. DuChamp counted on this negative association; but more importantly, he knew the ultimate controversy would be the urinal itself, an unmentionable device with which women of the time were not familiar: "The display of a urinal, then, was not commonplace at all, but extraordinarily modern, and one designed to be highly exotic and unfamiliar to half the audience" [20] , and hiding it away roused curiosity. Naming the piece Fountain was also satirical. A urinal has no fountain. Water is only used to flush the waste away. Is the title, therefore, a reference to the man using the urinal? If so, then the urinating man is the fountain. That became the beauty of the work, there is no right or wrong interpretation; there are many interpretations that can be inferred. Through Fountain, the object became the new focal point of Modern Art. Man has been discarded as the appropriate subject for a work of art, yet ironically, DuChamp suggests that man is the invisible fountain and brings the focal point full circle: back to man. Is it any wonder that DuChamp enjoyed antagonizing the art community, specifically his critics?: "I don’t care about the word ‘art’ because it has been so discredited. So I want to get rid of it. There is an unnecessary adoration of ‘art’ today" [21] . DuChamp was not concerned with negative critiques; rather, he worked to ignite interest. The notoriety he received with Fountain paved the way for future Readymades.

The Bicycle Wheel [22] drew further interest. This piece contained a painted wood stool, a bicycle wheel, and a fork that held the wheel upright and connected to the stool. The wheel was not locked in place but able to spin freely. Unlike previous works of art, it invited the viewer to become involved, to become a physical participant in the action of the wheel. It said: spin me. Like Fountain, critics attempted to decipher the deeper meaning behind this piece. One critic went so far as to give it a sexual connotation. He equated the bar piercing the surface of the stool to sexual intercourse. When DuChamp was asked to provide his interpretation, he simply said: "To set the wheel turning was very soothing, very comforting, a sort of opening of avenues on other things than the material life of everyday…I enjoyed looking at it just as I enjoy looking at the flames dancing in a fireplace" [23] . This became a typical DuChamp response, forcing his critics to formulate their own conclusions while providing a spotlight for DuChamp’s work. According to DuChamp:

…the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives a final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists. [24] 

DuChamp clearly realized that if he provided an explanation, the work would lose its mystique.

In Advance of a Broken Arm [25] preceded Fountain yet did not receive acclaim until Readymades had been acknowledged as an art form. This piece is an ordinary snow shovel, nothing more; an everyday item with one purpose, to shovel snow. So how is this art? Without a title, it is not. The title makes In Advance of a Broken Arm interesting and humorous. The title is a story that engages the viewer intellectually. Where The Bicycle Wheel provided physical interaction, In Advance of a Broken Arm encourages mental acuity. Perhaps the backstory goes something like this: Winter would soon be upon us, and in preparation of the inevitable snow fall, a man purchased a snow shovel. Unfortunately, he tripped over the shovel in the garage and broke his arm, making the snow shovel a worthless tool, much as it might appear in an art exhibition. Yet satirically, the work and its accompanying title is poking fun of advance preparations, inferring that all is not as it seems, and that one should live for today and not for tomorrow.

As DuChamp’s repertoire of Readymades grew, he succeeded in pushing art beyond the realm of the visual. For the first time, an idea could define art, rather than art defining an idea, and the time invested in producing a work of art was no longer crucial to the piece being considered art. Previously, three-dimensional artwork consisted of handcrafted sculpture. Because of DuChamp, that was about to change. Soon other artists were emulating him, using what was already made to convey a message.

Peer Pressure; DuChamp’s Conceptual Influence on his Contemporaries

In 1921, Emmanuel Radnitzky, known in the art world as Man Ray, tried his hand at a Readymade. He titled his piece The Gift [26] . The Gift is crafted from an iron which is propped up in exhibition. Down the center of the iron is a line of fourteen tacks. The typical purpose of an iron is to remove wrinkles and imperfections from clothing. Oh the iron-y of this piece! Man Ray’s iron would grip and hold rather than smooth and glide. His message may be considered a rejection of his family’s line of work, that of tailoring. Clearly he was following DuChamp’s precepts: the concept is paramount to both the appearance of the work and the time spent constructing it; "Man Ray constructed [The Gift] the very afternoon his show opened" [27] . The original piece vanished before the show closed, due to either approval or disapproval, yet just like DuChamp’s works, replicas were made, supporting the growing significance of Readymades.

At the same time, DuChamp and Man Ray’s work, was giving rise to the American version of the Dadaist movement that had sprung up and flourished in Germany from 1915 to about 1922. Though the artists in America had no connection with those in Germany, the nihilistic ideals behind Dadaism were being reflected in both DuChamp and Man Ray’s pieces, where spontaneity and collaboration was employed. As the Dadaist movement grew in the United States, DuChamp worked with and influenced other artists such as Francis Picabia. In addition, DuChamp and the movement touched other disciplines: "Dada had far-reaching effects on the art of the 20th century. Its nihilistic, antirationalistic critiques of society and its unrestrained attacks on all formal artistic conventions found no immediate inheritors, but its preoccupation with the bizarre, the irrational, and the fantastic bore fruit in the Surrealist movement" [28] . Like a ripple in water, DuChamp was impacting all the styles of the Modern Art Age.

DuChamp’s influence continued to prevail into the 1930s. During that decade, Hans Bellmer, a German artist, created several pieces titled Poupee [29] , life-sized, fragmented female mannequins. Though some suggest his insecurities toward women shaped these horrific pieces, in reality, the horrors of pre-World War II played a significant role. Perhaps no other artist embraced DuChamp’s conceptualism as Bellmer did, where Readymades were devoid of classical beauty. For Bellmer, it was all about the message, and to emphasize that message, Bellmer showcased atrocity. Through his decapitated and dismembered dolls, Bellmer was voicing his outrage at both the Nazi Party and his father, who had just become a member. According to Bellmer, "If the origin of my work is scandalous, it is because for me, the world is a scandal." [30] Readymades were now commenting on titanic social evils.

In 1936, Meret Oppenheim, a surrealist [31] , attempted to shock viewers and challenge their senses with her Readymade entitled Object [32] also known as Fur Covered Cup, Saucer, and Spoon, a tea cup covered in gazelle fur. No matter how thirsty one is, one does not drink from a furry cup. Most people dislike the sensation of wet hair in or near their mouths. Though Object is interesting to look at, it also creates an uncomfortable sensation through association. [33] Oppenheim brilliantly fused the strange imagery of surrealism with the conceptualism of the Readymade. Although Object did not comment on world issues as Poupee did, it promulgated the spread of the Readymade style into other genres of art.

By 1943, DuChamp’s influence reached Pablo Picasso. Until this point, Picasso had been working with brush and paint producing cubist pieces such as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1904) [34] , Three Musicians (1921) [35] , and Guernica (1937) [36] . It was a time when artists were questioning the concept of beauty. The now famous Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, an oil on canvas piece, depicted women of different races in poses traditional to their nationalities, and by classical standards certainly questioned the concept of beauty. Picasso identified with DuChamp’s Fountain and embraced DuChamp’s implied assertion that the value of a work of art was not connected to aesthetics. Though Picasso had glued a mechanically printed oilcloth onto a cubist canvas in 1912 and edged it with rope, calling it Still Life with Chair Caning [37] , it was not until he assembled Bull’s Head [38] that he created his first Readymade, a piece crafted from two objects. By attaching the metal handlebars of a bicycle to the backside of its metal saddle, he created the illusion of a bull’s head and horns. From a distance it is not apparent that the piece is a Readymade constructed from bicycle parts. It is accurate and interesting. Yet upon closer scrutiny, it seems primitive and banal. And this is precisely what Picasso was aiming for:

Guess how I made the bull's head? One day, in a pile of objects all jumbled up together, I found an old bicycle seat right next to a rusty set of handlebars. In a flash, they joined together in my head. The idea of the Bull's Head came to me before I had a chance to think. All I did was weld them together... [but] if you were only to see the bull’s head and not the bicycle seat and handlebars that form it, the sculpture would lose some of its impact. [39] 

Like Meret Oppenheim, Picasso combined the fundamental theory of Cubism—primarily simplicity—with the Readymade. And like Hans Bellmer’s Poupee, Bull’s Head was viewed in a social context: "the sculpture is a moment of wit and whimsy ...both childlike and highly sophisticated in its simplicity, it stands as an assertion of the transforming power of the human imagination at a time when human values were under siege." [40] Although Picasso’s Bull’s Head required more time to assemble than most of DuChamp’s Readymades, his ability to envision the bicycle handle bars and seat as a piece of art would never have been possible before DuChamp. DuChamp had set the stage for Picasso’s eureka.

In 1956, Richard Hamilton produced Just What is it that Makes Todays Home So Different, and So Appealing? [41] . The collage, a 10" x 9" piece, was rather small, but largly recognized and intentionally riddled with sexual innuendos. It also contained gimmicky, glamorous qualities and targeted the young. It was inexpensive to create, comprised primarily of cut up magazines, a mass produced product of urban culture, somewhat like a Readymade. Re-piecing together the magazine scraps, Hamilton created something different, giving the original magazines new meaning, something sexy and suggestive. One may counter that Hamilton was not influenced by DuChamp, that collages existed long before the Readymade, but unlike pre-Readymades, Just What is it That Makes Today’s Home So Different, and So Appealing? was created utilizing already printed magazines. Furthermore, Hamilton admitted a great respect for DuChamp:

Mr. Hamilton’s veneration for Duchamp, and the concept of the ready-made, helped determine the course of his art after the 1960s. He manipulated found objects and photographs, putting his own spin on newspaper photographs, postcards and industrial objects—like the Braun electric toothbrush, which he topped with a set of candy teeth— as well as prints filtering the images of other artists. [42] 

Hamilton gave a new twist to the Readymade and defined the terms within which the up-and-coming PopArt style [43] would operate.

By the 1960s, the decade in which DuChamp died, DuChamp’s Post-Modern concepts had branched into unexpected art genres. With the debut of artists such as Andy Warhol, DuChamp’s conceptualism inhabited an important place in PopArt, and by extension, mass marketing, theater, music, and film production. Taking his cue from DuChamp–"Just as his imagery was not unique, neither was his process. Warhol was basically just changing context to make art, which Marcel DuChamp had first done in 1917 when he put a urinal in a gallery" [44] â€“

Warhol used art as a social testimonial, full of the same parody and satire:

Warhol’s life and work simultaneously satirized and celebrated materiality and celebrity. On the one hand, his paintings of distorted brand images and celebrity faces could be read as a critique of what he viewed as a culture obsessed with money and celebrity. On the other hand, Warhol’s focus on consumer goods and pop-culture icons, as well as his own taste for money and fame, suggest a life in celebration of the very aspects of American culture that his work criticized. [45] 

Like DuChamp, Warhol focused on ordinary, everyday objects that he felt he could turn into art. Unlike DuChamp, he took the ordinary and repainted it, creating something new out of something old. Having worked initially as a commercial illustrator for marketing agencies, Warhol viewed products such as Campbell’s Soup and the assembly line required to manufacture those cans as a potential work of art. As an artist he wanted to emulate the repetitive process and thus painted multiple copies of the Campbell label. Critics might argue that, compared to DuChamp’s Readymades, the act of recreating and the time involved in doing so constitutes art, validating Warhol’s work over DuChamp’s; however, Warhol refuted that when he said: "he wanted to be a machine and that art was anything that you could get away with" and "he was interested in making money and that making money was art." [46] Warhol’s life seemed a contradiction to the message behind his work–an enigma that is all DuChamp. As Warhol branched out into film making, he again built upon elements born of DuChamp. His short clips were filled with satirical meaning. In one such clip, he used DuChamp for his subject. Devoid of speech, this film consisted of DuChamp smoking a cigar, drinking a glass of water, and staring aimlessly (or was he?) at the camera. [47] Just as DuChamp’s Readymades were open for interpretation, so too was Warhol’s short film. And now, DuChamp had influenced yet another genre: the motion picture.

Throughout his life, DuChamp’s style shaped the works of innumerable artists. At the same time, his concepts, now imitated by his peers, were reinventing the techniques used to represent and market artwork. The "look" of art exhibits and galleries had changed.

The Art of Marketing Art

DuChamp’s first Readymade, The Bicycle Wheel, had always occupied a special place in his heart. Perhaps it was because it was his first Readymade, although he had not yet defined it as art, or perhaps it was because he found the movement of the wheel soothing. Whichever the reason, the interaction required between the piece and the viewer paved the way for DuChamp to explore and craft another type of sculpture. In 1920, he created Rotary Glass Plates (Percision Optics) [48] , a kinetic construction supported by a wooden frame with rectangular glass plates. True to Cezanne’s ideas, the piece when motionless is comprised of cubes and cones. When put into motion, the spinning plates provide the third element of cubism: the sphere. The apparatus then creates an optical illusion in which the segments appear to be closed, concentric circles.

Five years later, DuChamp introduced Rotary Demisphere [49] , another kinetic piece with a spiral as its focal point. When set in motion, the spinning spiral creates a hypnotic, optical illusion. Though DuChamp’s Readymades were already being reproduced and displayed in various galleries, it was DuChamp’s mechanical pieces, which he called mobiles, that ensured his place in the art gallery. In addition, art curators were taking notice, and their attention was focused as much on the public’s reaction to DuChamp’s pieces as the pieces themselves: "Simply stated, by adding motion and movement to his artwork, DuChamp created a marketing sensation." [50] DuChamp’s mobiles had a lasting impact [51] . Now he was challenging conventional thoughts about the marketing of art, and the public loved it; clearly people were looking for something different.

One such person was Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim, born in New York in 1898. She was the daughter of millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim who perished when the Titanic foundered in 1912. She was only fourteen when she acquired her fortune, inheriting $2.5 million from her father’s estate. As a young woman, she worked in an Avant-Garde book store and was introduced to the Bohemian [52] artistic community. It was in the 1920s that she met Marcel DuChamp, who formally introduced her to the art world. Intrigued by modern art, she was enthralled by the pieces DuChamp pointed out and the style he taught her about, and she quickly became a collector: "She collected art like nobody else, picking up items that didn’t sell, and works for which there was, as yet, no market, just because she loved them. She bought art, not as an investment, but because she saw something that her own eyes told her was great" [53] . She adopted DuChamp’s claim that the value of an art piece was not linked to money.

Guggenheim opened her first art gallery, the Guggenheim Jeune, in London, from 1938 to 1939 [54] . DuChamp helped her with several of the exhibits, which primarily showcased surrealist works. As her support of the arts continued to grow, opening an art museum was the obvious next step. Again, she selected London, but when World War II broke out, she abandoned London for Paris. Opening a museum there became out of the question when German forces advanced into France. A woman of Jewish descent, Guggenheim returned to New York in the summer of 1941, where she opened the Art of the Century Gallery, which was part museum and part gallery, and included a section that allowed for art purchases. Throughout the 1930s, she had amassed her own private collection which included Picasso, Ernst, Man Ray, Dali, and Chagall. Again, DuChamp had a huge influence on the pieces she purchased: "Duchamp challenged the very definition of art, legitimizing ideas as artworks of their own. He advised collectors like Peggy Guggenheim and (then) Museum of Modern Art directors Alfred Barr and James Jonson Sweeny, directly impacting what we see in museums’ collections today" [55] . And because of Peggy Guggenheim’s avid interest in modern art, as well as her empathy for those artists struggling to make a mark, she was instrumental in advancing the careers of many authentic and upcoming artists: "In just eight years, Peggy Guggenheim changed the face of 20th-century art, and her life, both public and intimate, was as radical as her collection." [56] Perhaps she was considered radical because she was rumored to have had innumerable lovers—shocking behavior for the time. ** "when asked how many husbands she'd had, the twice-married Guggenheim quipped, ‘D'you mean my own or other people's?’" ** [57] and perhaps this was the very reason she identified with the controversial DuChamp.

Peggy Guggenheim continued to support the arts, and so too did her uncle, Solomon R. Guggenheim. He established The Museum of Non-Objective Painting in New York City in 1939. In 1943, Frank Lloyd Wright—a renowned architect—was asked to design a permanent home for the museum. It took over a decade and more than 700 sketches to design [58] . Construction began in 1956 and was completed in 1959. The new building was renamed The Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art in memory of Guggenheim who had died in 1949. Like Peggy Guggenheim’s galleries, it too showcased Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art, and also featured special exhibitions throughout the year. Though Peggy Guggenheim had loaned her invaluable collection to worldwide galleries throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, upon her death in 1979, her collection passed to the Guggenheim Museum, where it can be seen today.

Opponents of the Modern Art movement—those who were offended by bizarre pieces that strayed far from the classical—felt that the Avant-Garde works being displayed in more and more museums were there because bored, rich people had nothing better to do with their time and money than to look at absurd pieces, purchase them, and then try to conjure a deeper meaning: "Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art" [59] . Challengers of the new styles felt art should be evaluated on the merit of its beauty and the time taken to craft it. But this perception was something artists all over the world were rejecting. There was never a point in history when art was unchanging; likewise, throughout history, artists of masterpieces frequently died penniless because their work had gone undiscovered.

In addition to art patrons such as Peggy Guggenheim, corporations sponsored 20th Century artists. Stores offered storefront space for DuChamp’s Society of Independent Artists 1918 art exhibition. Magazines such as Vogue published cubist styles and Steinway Pianos began using cubo-realism to advertise their pianos. Modern Art was truly crossing boundaries when it stepped onto the music scene with "Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which premiered in 1924 on a program of ‘An Experiment in Modern Music’" [60] . Though DuChamp would eventually abandon the art process to play chess, another passion he had harbored throughout his life, his contribution to the arts continued to resonate.

Ready(made) or Not, Here it Comes

Without question, DuChamp altered the manner in which art is viewed, accepted, and utilized. Today he continues to inspire artists of every discipline, and the public’s perception of art, whether conscious or unconscious, positive or negative, can be attributed to him. Nothing supports this more clearly than the exhibition of Dancing Around the Bride; Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, and DuChamp which showed from October 30, 2012 to January 21, 2013 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania. [61] The show was an exploration and validation of the impact Marcel DuChamp had on four modern-day masters representing three different artistic disciplines. Though Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg are visual artists, John Cage is a composer, and Merce Cunningham a choreographer. Each artist was dramatically influenced by DuChamp’s American legacy, and the Dancing Around the Bride exhibition compares the artists’ work with DuChamp’s in order to establish a time frame of their interactions and exchanges of ideas. In a press release, Timothy Rub, the Museum’s George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer said:

As the Philadelphia Museum of Art holds the world’s largest and most significant collection of works by Marcel Duchamp, it is only fitting for the Museum to present this first exhibition juxtaposing works by Cage, Cunningham, Johns, and Rauschenberg with one another and exploring their complex and vitally important relationship to Duchamp This multidimensional and interdisciplinary show will enable visitors to experience and more fully appreciate one of the most exciting and momentous periods in the history of modern art. [62] 

The exhibition, broken into various parts, is a testimonial to the impact five extraordinary artists had on art and culture when their lives and work transected. It is also a testimonial to the power of DuChamp to cross into other mediums and foster collaboration between the artists of today. According to Cage, Cunningham, Johns, and Rauschenberg, they were each inspired by DuChamp and his work during the early stages of their artistic careers and incorporated DuChamp’s basic ideas into their works. By doing this, they confirmed DuChamp’s assertion that "posterity gives a final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists" [63] . Though far from a forgotten artist, DuChamp’s legacy, infused in the many artists who followed in his footsteps, remains a prominent figure in the world of art. He continues to set the stage, and that stage becomes a new exposition for his concepts.

If artists of today have adopted his message—it is art because I chose it—they have also recognized the marketing lesson to be learned from Fountain: The shock value inherent to the outlandish, the erotic, the sacrilegious, or the downright bizarre can provoke a more powerful response than the best review. Today we have iconic figures like Lady Gaga: sporting meat dresses to promote her message of animal rights; her PopArt tattoo that applauds Andy Warhol and by extension, DuChamp; her photo shoot repertoire that incorporates elements of Cubism; and her ever-changing hairstyles and makeup that have become her own art form. [64] Strange is good, weird is better. In the performing arts, this has been a growing trend since DuChamp’s death in the 1960s. Avant-Garde artists such as Yoko Ono brought her modernistic influence to bear on John Lennon. Their Album cover, Two Virgins [65] , which features both Ono and Lennon in full-frontal nudity, outraged the "proper" world, but it gained the new duo notoriety and sold records. Elton John wore the most flamboyant outfits as he took the stage, expanding upon the earlier styles of Liberace. In each case, there is no question of artistic talent, but evoking a "shocked" response catapultes each artist’s work to greater heights.

Visual artists have capitalized on the shock value of a piece in much the same way. In 1987, Andres Serrano printed and displayed his offensive photograph Piss Christ [66] , a picture of a plastic crucifix submerged in a jar of Serrano’s urine. The jar is not visible and the crucifix does not appear to be plastic. In fact, the crucifix in the photograph is quite beautiful, emitting an eerie, ethereal aura. One would never conceive that urine had created the glowing effect surrounding Christ. Yet for all its beauty, it might never have received measurable notice. Name it Piss Christ, however, and the photograph becomes the centerpiece of controversy. Like Fountain, it is recognized for its profane authenticity. It also caused an uproar, especially among outraged Catholics who viewed the work as blasphemous. Because the work had received a $15,000 prize from the National Endowment for the Arts, an organization funded by taxpayers, Senator Alfonse d’Amato accused contemporary art of having sunk to a level of disgrace and indignity. He called the piece a "deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity" [67] . This piece, along with a few others, fueled a Congressional assault on the National Endowment for the Arts, which led to a 45% decrease in the agencies budget. According to Serrano, his intention in presenting the piece was to test the limits of what is acceptable and not acceptable. That was his "idea", and because Piss Christ roused both extreme criticism and praise, that idea was answered—some viewers were very accepting, while others were not, but the piece still exists in ten separate photographs displayed in cities worldwide—signifying the work as art. Art can be controversial and offensive and still be art. Today’s Avant-Garde artists are known for pushing the boundaries of acceptability, just as DuChamp did with Fountain. Now, nearly one hundred years since the debut of Fountain, much of society still remains uncomfortable with change and the introduction of new types of art: "Everyone who belongs to the art scene is keenly aware of this conflict; it is only the outsiders—the intellectual provinces, as it were—who miss its significance in their effort to embrace the newest reputations" [68] . When man is steeped in tradition, he finds it difficult to understand and embrace a new order. Talking to a guide at the Guggenheim Museum, a woman stated, "…henceforth, modern art together with all the picayune critical discriminations that have followed in its wake must be consigned, as it were, to the trash heap of history" [69] . Misunderstood styles and uncomfortable subjects are often the cause of close mindedness; however, if it is art, it will stand the test of time, and the extent of the poor reviews given at the time of the work’s debut will no longer matter. DuChamp and his Fountain are a testimony to this:

Such is the importance of Fountain that, in December 2004, it was voted the most influential work of modern art by 500 art-world professionals. In contemplation, that seems something of an understatement: with this single "readymade"" work, DuChamp invented conceptual art and severed forever the traditional link between the artist’s labour and the merit of the work. [70] 

It is ironic, when considering the test of time and the stamp of approval time may eventually yield, that one artist purposefully crafted a natural work knowing it would be reclaimed by time. Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty [71] , is a large-scale, organic piece that extends 1,500 feet from the shore line on one of the Salt Lakes in Utah. It is constructed out of rocks and other earthly materials. Smithson did not modify the rocks in any way, other than to change their location; perhaps his was the first natural Readymade. Spiral Jetty reaches straight into the lake, and after a distance, begins curving to the left forming a spiral until it reaches its center. Spiral Jetty is both satirical and beautiful. It is quite different from DuChamp, yet somehow similar. Like DuChamp’s Readymades, it does not act as a jetty in the traditional sense. And like DuChamp, Smithson was striving for the authentic. Sadly, over the years, Spiral Jetty is being destroyed by nature. Supporters of the arts sought to preserve it in order that it not be lost as DuChamp’s early Readymades were. Clearly, it has stood the test of time, before time has run out.

Other pieces, though equally intriguing, have not received lasting approval. In 1970, Duane Hanson created The Tourists [72] , a series of life-sized sculptures comprised of several different pieces: fully clothed men and women. Instead of placing them on pedestals, he cleverly placed them in different areas of the museum, ensuring that they looked like other museum patrons. The people who visited the museum were often tricked into believing The Tourists were real until they attempted to talk to them. Unfortunately, some people were annoyed by the hoax, and the brilliantly executed exhibit was placed behind glass, which annihilated the concept, and therefore the work itself. If no other work of art proves the importance of the thought behind the piece, The Tourists does. Without the "idea", the "meaning" or the "statement", a piece of art loses its intrinsic value.

**CONCLUSION** YAYYYYY!!!!

Marcel DuChamp may have shocked the world when he claimed his Readymades were art. And after all these decades, there are those who still reject his works as art. He did, however, prove that art need no longer be based on beauty, but rather on meaning; its subject need not be God and man, but object and truth; its value is no longer measured by the money it commands but rather by the response it evokes; and its acceptance as art will never again be linked to the time taken to create it, but rather the enlightening perception it jars in the viewer.

Because of DuChamp art becomes art when it is "chosen", when an artist looks at something in an innovative way, and showcases it. Art becomes art when an implicit meaning is attributed to it. Art becomes art when it shares its message with others. Today, art can be found in graffiti, in body art, in the theater and on the concert stage. It is the title on a book cover that makes a statement and engages the potential reader. It has become a marketing tool on every level, where new is no longer equated with Avant-Garde but rather cutting edge. Art can also be found in state-of-the-art urinals that are lavishly (rather than shockingly) displayed in magazines and showrooms. This change of perception was not orchestrated by one single artist; it was a collaborative effort. But it is safe to say that Marcel DuChamp spearheaded the movement when he purchased his state-of-the-art urinal and attempted to put it on display.

Did DuChamp perpetrate the ultimate joke, or set in motion a brilliant plan? Was Fountain a stab at ingenious humor or a well staged strategy to introduce a new form of art? Had Paris’ rejection of Nude Descending a Staircase and New York’s subsequent ridicule of it, set in motion an elaborate scheme to successfully endorce a new art movement, Conceptualism, and launch the age of Post-Modernism? Or was DuChamp’s submission of Fountain merely a means of poking fun at his peers, the men who comprised the Society of Independent Artists? "It would be wrong to neglect the element of the huge practical joke in Fountain and its general air of disconcertingly ridiculing the art world as well as, with complete seriousness, reconfiguring everything it thought it believed about art." [73] In either case, DuChamp and his Readymades laid the corner stone of the Post-Modern Era, upon which his contemporaries built, giving rise to the Avant-Guarde in all artistic disciplines. Approve of him or not, Marcel DuChamp stands as a colossal monument to the art work of today and the world as we know it.