I don’t get it

I may have waxed rhapsodic about modern architecture in my previous post, but when it comes to modern art, I confess that my aesthetic sense is too grounded in… what do I call it? ah yes. Reality.

Here’s the perfect example: 500 art experts voted on what piece of art was the most influential in the past hundred years, and they picked Duchamp’s urinal. That was a simple commercial urinal, which the artist signed and put on display:

duchamp-urinal.jpg

I don’t get it.

Maybe the art experts were being ironic; maybe they were being satirical; maybe they were saying that the urinal represented some kind of ultimate banality of art, a deconstruction of what art means, and in so doing became some kind of profound commentary on the nature of art itself.

Maybe. I dunno. I don’t get it.

But if a urinal can win the top prize for most influential piece of art in the past century, then I humbly suggest No Knife as honorable mention.

One thought on “I don’t get it”

  1. I have a suspicion that the key word here is “influential”.

    Not “good”. Not “inspirational”. Not “extraordinary”. Not “meaningful”.

    I bet it actually was quite influential. But not any of those other things.

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