THE FISHERY
The Fishery is a repository of controversial art works in Art, Advertising, Design, and New Media; with brief commentaries on each piece.The mission of this blog is to serve as a resource center for College Teaching Purposes. It will slowly be filled with links to presentations designed for in-class usage.
Guido E. Alvarez
www.hyperscholar.com
1. Marcel Duchamp.
In 1917, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) was an influential board member
of the Society of Independent Artists. He was a respected artist who
was co-developing a movement (a non-movement as he may have argued)
based in New York. This movement was set against the mainstream culture
and what they conceived as a powerful monster called Industry with its
mass produced objects as art-commodities.
Using a Bedfordshire model urinal
as his canvas he signed a pseudonym on one of the urinal sides: "R.
Mutt 1917," the he entitled it: "Fountain" and submitted the
piece to an important art show.
The piece was the central point of much
debate among the members of the society about what is and how art is
defined and ultimately they decided to hide it from the show. The
exhibition committee was not aware that the piece was authored by
Duchamp who was an important figure associated to the group as a member
of the board. Since the show proclaimed that:"All art will be
exhibited," Duchamp made his point and as a result he resigned from the
board of Members along with Walter Arensberg, an influential art
collector who helped Duchamp present this piece."Fountain" helped
to stir controversy about what is art and how it is presented to the
public it served as the theme for many books, scholarly articles,
movies, documentaries and infinite number of analysis that affect art
education to this day. Duchamp claimed that the piece's intention was
to redefine art from a physical activity to an intellectual act of
interpretation. 
Duchamp's Fountain became an icon of Contemporary Art History as it was voted among the most influential artworks of the 20th Century. The actual piece disappeared but authorized replicas by Duchamp himself are exhibited in several major museums in America and Europe. The replicated pieces suffered some attacks over the years. The Neo-Dada performance artist Pierre Pinoncelli urinated in it in 1993 while on display in France, and in 2006 he attempted to destroy it with a hammer and eventually got to chip it as it was being exhibited in the famous Pompidou Center in Paris claiming that Marcel Duchamp would have love the destruction.
2. Damian Hirst
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