Marcel Duchamp and Sherrie Levine

Duchamp is an example of an artist famous for their use of readymades.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573

Fountain is one of his most well-known pieces and pushes the boundaries of what constitutes art -  I find it makes people very uncomfortable and agitated when something doesn't live up to their idea of what art should be and they often use lines such as 'I could do that', 'My 3 year old could do that' or completely deny that it is art all together. Challenging preconcieved ideas of art seems like a brave thing for an artist to do because of the level of backlash it causes and rejection from the public - but I find that it is typically people not involved in the art world who are quick to say 'this is not art', I guess not everyone thinks creatively or open mindedly either, so whether we should listen to these opinions is questionable. Duchamp's Fountain seems like a humourous piece and it is weird to see a urinal in the museum setting because we associate it with culture and high status but this is a kind of 'fuck you' in that context. Seeing it disconnected from the plumbing and isolated as a singular object is also kind of uncanny and makes us do a double take. To be able to use a mundane object and get people to engage with it seems like a creative achievement to me and I think it's amazing how much discussion and debate can come from something as basic as a urinal. I hope my juice cartons will also have the effect of capturing an audience who would not normally stop to consider an object so mundane. Of course my work is not a display of a single real carton, but multiple glazed ceramic replicas - so it's going to be slightly different.

Sherrie Levine created this reinterpretation of Duchamp's Fountain.

https://whitney.org/media/760 Fountain (Buddha) by Sherrie Levine, 1996

Sherrie Levine is known as a re-appropriation artist who remakes work by male artists who played dominant patriarchal roles in history. 

Fountain (Buddha) is a bronze copy of Duchamp's Fountain, which has an increased sense of material value and beauty compared to the original and is more recognisable by audiences as an art object. This reflects how my ceramic cartons will create a different reaction to the original disposable objects, as they have been elevated through the materials, colours and finish, becoming more ornamental and eye-catching. 


Here's a comparison of a group of real cartons vs my ceramic remakes. There is something visually more interesting about the ceramic versions and they seem to have a higher sense of status. 

 

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