Essay - We All Know the Story of How Marcel Duchamp Took...

We all know the story of how Marcel Duchamp took a urinal, c*****ed it "Fountain," put it in an art show and *****n defended his action on the grounds that as he was an *****ist and ***** said ***** urinal was art, then it was.

This is just the sort ***** thing ***** has given modern art a b*****d name. But why should it have? Why should that ***** not be art?

Underst*****ing the answer to ***** question - whether one believes that that urinal was art or not - allows one to understand both the Dadaist movement and much of what ***** happened in the four generations of modern art since.

In an interview conducted f***** this paper, Karen Finley, a conceptu*****l artist who ***** ***** of ***** infamous NEA Four, talked about the importance ***** that urinal.

On the one hand, me, personally, I don't like the piece because it's got all the h*****marks of you've-got-to-have-a-penis-to-be-an-***** all over it. You notice he didn't choose a bidet.

But on a different level, ***** think that it was an im*****nsely important statement. Lots of people look at it and say ***** Duchamp and the other Dadaists were thumbing their noses at the public, that *****y were trying to insult the public by acting ***** ***** public ***** so stupid that they would accept any ***** ***** garbage as art.

***** that's not ***** Duchamp w***** doing. What he was doing was thumbing his nose at a system of p*****tr*****age that ***** ***** it wasn't t***** ***** and it ***** the artist who got to decide what art is but rather the patron, the per*****n with the money.

What ***** did was ***** ***** enough it enough to all of that. He said that ********** could be an art*****t if *****y had something to say, and that they could deliver their message using whatever they had at hand. It was a fundament*****y democr*****ic gesture.

People criticize modern art - they criticize my work - by *****ing that a child could do it. And, you know, that's the way it should *****. Everyone who wants to should be able to be an artist. ***** if people like what you have to say, great, ********** maybe you c***** support yourself as an artist. But if they *****n't like *****, that doesn't mean that you're ***** an *****. Each one of us should get to decide about the meaning of our own work.

Duchamp's ***** motivations ***** perhaps not quite ***** altruistic as Finley describes them as being - there was also no small element ***** acting out simply beca*****e it's fun in his work - but she is correct in assessing the importance of the work of the ***** in changing the relationship ***** the artist and ***** audience to art and - in choosing to step beyond traditional *****-making materials and techniques - to technology and machinery as well.

In order to underst***** ***** the Dadaists, and especially Duchamp, created the kind