In 1913, four years before artist Marcel Duchamp’s infamous Fountain was submitted to the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York City, he created his first readymade. These works, often constructed of everyday objects like bicycle wheels, or in the case of Fountain, a urinal, reflected Duchamp’s feeling that art was meant not just for the eyes but also the mind. His interest in and focus on conceptual and kinetic process along with his wit had profound impact upon artists in New York following the end of World War I, and Fountain – despite being rejected from the show – caused such a sensation that New York Dada was born. After working in many of the boundary-pushing genres of the early 20th century in both Paris and New York, Duchamp spent much of his time playing chess and occasionally working with artists in the decades following, and his influence can been in the work of Alexander Calder, Man Ray, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Cage, among others.
Stieglitz photographed Fountain, and then it was lost to history. It would be almost another 50 years, in 1963, before Duchamp’s message that art can be made from anything was finally delivered. With the ‘readymade’ Fountain, Duchamp told the world that a revolution in the art institution had happened, a break with the past more remarkable and with greater implications than previously acknowledged: the old Beaux-Arts system had died and been replaced by what Thierry de Duve describes as a world where “everything is a legitimate candidate for the status of art”. [1] In this new system art can be made from anything, and one can be an artist without being the practitioner of an art in particular. This was Duchamp’s message, his thought experiment.
Artists are invited to submit existing or new sculptures and installations that are inspired by Duchamp’s readymades or his art and ideas in general. Works will be judged on how well they relate to the proposed theme, how suitable they are for the available space, as well as how all selected works come together for a cohesive exhibition.
