The fact that Fountain is pissing off trads over a 100 years later is so fucking funny
As an art major, while I know Fountain is a valid piece of art that accomplished exactly what it set out to do, I also think it’s one of the stupidest things. We have a urinal in a museum display. I have yet to see a work I think is dumber.
The thing I love most about Duchamps urinal piece is that it was so “low cost” in terms of creative labour (compared to say, a large scale oil painting or sculpture for example), but it’s absolutely FULL of rage against the traditionalists and the world at that time and it’s SUCH a statement, it’s like, “oh just a mass manufactured item with a signature” but the reality of it is so many layers of meaning and without understanding the history at the time you don’t get it.
It’s an incredibly clever “fuck you” and I love it
An old professor of mine, an expert in Duchamp who has written several books, has a theory. In part, “Fountain” was a prank, a personal “fuck you” to the organization looking for artworks. It’s importance cannot be overstated, and this importance stems from the fact that “Fountain” is /ridiculous/. It is enraging, it is hilarious, and it is very fascinating.
Aside from Duchamp’s readymades, I love “Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even”. Pictured below, the work invokes a complex machine, one my professor spent a great deal of time studying. Eventually, he reached his conclusion. My professor had been pranked. He believes “Bride Stripped Bare” is a joke about masturbation, hidden to all except those study it excessively.
At first blush, Duchamp’s works are stupid. Upon further study, they’re very complex. And, upon true understanding, Duchamp is laughing at you. To me, it seems the closer you come to truly understanding Duchamp, the more he slaps you in the face with a large fish.
Let me rage about “traditionalism revival” here. This is a dogwhistle.
As a lover of art, there are many complex and technically impressive works being created today, which both embrace different artistic traditions and break from them. To ignore those is to ignore contemporary art.
Here, OP is raging against conceptual art, which stimulates thought and challenges tradition. He wants his followers to believe that art has “degenerated”, because the West has “degenerated”. OP is intentionally engaging with fascist ideas of “degenerate art”.
If OP wanted to be accurate, he would seek to restore the Salon System, the Beaux Arts Academy, and classical training in the arts. The collapse of this specific system allowed for Modernism to evolve. Of course, that’s not what OP is talking about. He’s evoking beauty as a moral standard, telling his followers to “restore Western tradition”, to fight against aesthetic “degeneracy” in culture.
(By the way, Duchamp is commenting ON MODERNISM with “Fountain”. Duchamp submitted the work to the Society of Independent Artists’ salon in New York, who would accept any work by any artist, for a small fee. In part, Duchamp is saying, “Is this what you Modernists want? A urinal? Look me in the eyes and prove this is not art.”
If OP dared to use his brain, perhaps he would agree with Duchamp here.)
The thing is that it isn’t even a urinal! It doesn’t match any model manufactured at the time. Also Duchamp was an accomplished ceramicist. It’s likely that he made the sculpture and absolutely everyone is like “I know what a urinal looks like. This is sufficiently urinal-shaped for me to assume it is one without looking at it closely!”
Duchamp had other readymades, like his snow shovel, where if you actually look at the photos, the handle is square and the bowl is way too flimsy. Why would manufacturers make a snow shovel with a squared-off handle? It’s impossible to hold! Duchamp slapped the “readymades” label on all these items and the hoity-toity art people who were so good at looking at things didn’t see it (probably because they’d never had to do labor like shovel snow imo, amongst other things).
Marcel Duchamp. In Advance of the Broken Arm. Museum of Modern Art. (4th Version [Ed.!!!] after lost original of November 1915)
wait what. there… what?!?! IT ISN’T AN ACTUAL URINAL?!? or might not be anyway. what the fuck.
if the dude seriously did that, his troll game is out of everyone’s league except Leader Kibo.
My favorite thing about Fountain (besides the fact it has been pissing off fascists for over a century, natch) is that the original was lost and he made a bunch of official editions to sell to various museums (after the original was lost, possibly on purpose).
And they’re different! If it was a real “readymade” he could have just bought some more at his local hardware store, but no. He changed them in OBVIOUS WAYS.
See the triangle of holes?
Here’s the one from the Tate Modern:
Oh hello, cross-holes. Fancy seeing you here.
SFMOMA’s edition has the triangle holes, but it also has a line of holes at the top that are completely different from either other version.
Here’s one from Moderna Museet. Line and a circular set of holes!
Duchamp definitely intentionally made these different on purpose. It’s a “readymade” but it’s not, really, each of these is a specific custom creation.
It’s not even clear if he made it! He wrote a letter to his sister claiming that a female friend sent it to him, and he just enrolled it in the art exhibit under his own name. There’s also a possibility that that female friend was himself, since he later had a female pseudonym of Rrose Sélav.
This whole piece of art is a fractal troll, and it’s a beautiful one.
art is a creative statement.
sometimes that statement is ‘go fuck yourself’
I’d just like to point out that the same people who made this
ethics of making AI images aside, I do find a bit amusing the kinds of sob stories and mental gymnastics people make up to pretend like drawing is this super technical skill with an impossibly high barrier of entry when its like one of the first hobbies toddlers pick up
suddenly a lot of people think they got the next Lord of the Rings in their head but they were never able to turn their stories into anything tangible because the evil elitist artists are hogging all the talent and skill and they need a bajilion years of training or something as if one of the most popular manga and anime of the past decade wasn’t made by a guy that draws like this
Pulling this out of my tags but for real one of the best webcomics(and also best story in general) I have ever read started out looking like this:
You do not have to be Michaelangelo to make art, just make it. Also, obligatory quote from my good man Bob Ross:
ALT
Sorry to pull this out of the tags also but I absolutely agree and wanted to elaborate further, bcs like another reason I genuinely think anyone who is interested in art but feels like they suck too much to make it should really just stay away from AI and actually just give drawing a chance is because AI cannot create new art styles. It can only make copies of what you put into it, so much so that if you want something in a specific style you have to tell it the name of the artist you want it to mimic because it cannot make something that doesn’t already exist. If all you ever fed it were drawings of stick figures that’s all it would ever know how to do.
But humans can make new art styles, every person’s art is unique. And when it comes to ONE(author/artist behind Mob Psycho 100 and One Punch Man) and Rich Berlew(author and artist of Order of the Stick), if these guys never just started making their comics we wouldn’t have ever been able to see these expressive, funny, strange, and just all around captivating pieces of art!
The image I used of Order of the Stick isn’t actually exactly what it looked like at this start, this is:
And THIS is what Order of the Stick looks like now:
And while it does still look similar, it’s clear how much Burlew has improved and grown comfortable in his unique artstyle, how far he’s come in the last 21 years. The lighting, the line art, the panel layout, all of it has improved while still essentially just being stick figures. And I cannot even begin to describe how much I fucking LOVE the way this comic looks.
Switching to ONE, his art started out super rough
And while One Punch Man did get a new artist…I genuinely think the “better” art has lost a lot of the charm the original had. I’m so glad that ONE did Mob Psycho 100 himself and that the anime mimicked his style rather than trying to make it look more standard like OPM did, because my god, this guy’s stuff conveys humor in a way that is as brilliant as it is unique. It’s rough, but the roughness doesn’t take away from the impact or emotions, it honestly adds to them, and overall it’s incredible to see how much ONE has improved, but also how much it still looks like his art:
I do not want to live in a world where ONE and Rich Burlew didn’t make their comics because they were too scared of their art looking bad. I don’t want to live in a world without these stories and these dynamic and original art styles. Burlew’s art legit has given me confidence, I always felt bad that when I finished and colored my art all my lines were so thick and smooth and coloring-book-esque, it’s why most of what I post is like, sketches, colored or not. But after reading Order of the Stick I legit cried a little because for the first time I didn’t feel bad about just doing the kind of line art that feels right to me, which looks like this:
So fr, please if you want to make art just make art. Everyone’s art is unique in one way or another and if you just rely on AI all the time we’ll never get to see styles like ONE and Rich Burlew’s and again, I don’t want to live in a world where we don’t get to see all of these amazing, imperfect works of art. I want to see YOUR art, because it’s yours, and the world is a better place with your art in it.
you’re entitled to make art! you’re just not entitled to make art that’s perfectly beautiful. fortunately, no one else is either.
Happy Trans Day of Visibility everyone! Wanna remind everyone that every trans person is beautiful and no matter what gender (or absence of) you have I’m happy to see you rocking it. All my trans followers get one (1) free cookie!
I think this is one of the most difficult things to realize. Be it writing or drawing or making music or crafting – it’s not fun. Not always.
I think we all expect it to be, I mean, why do it if it isn’t fun? It looks so easy when others do it. And then we get discouraged when things inevitably turn out to be more difficult than we thought. And then we blame ourselves!
It should be easy! This should be fun! I’m such a hack, I’m doing this wrong, I will never be good at this because it isn’t fun and it’s supposed to be fun, else it’s just a stupid waste of time.
We all feel this way sometimes.
Allow yourself to accept this. It isn’t always fun, sometimes it’s really difficult and you have to push through to get to the other part that is more fun.
It’s not easy, it’s not always fun but that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to do it. You’re not wrong, you’re not stupid, you’re not a hack. Keep doing your thing.
the thing about “i could do that” is that what people mean is that they can copy the finished product because the work of coming up with something and making it has already been done for them. every little creative decision has already been made and put into creating something, so “doing the same thing” is only doing the work of physically making something. but art doesn’t just appear out of thin air. every little decision someone makes is part of the creative process. if you “can just do that” you would be doing it instead of just saying it. because the most essential part of making a piece of art is actually making it. you have to come up with it, decide to make it, and make it, for it to even exist. you can look at someone’s works and think that on a technical level you can Do The Same Thing but that’s not really true. because the work of unique creative choices for a particular piece you’re looking at has already been done. some pieces are hard to make because they’re very complex on a technical level, but every single piece that’s created requires the essential work of coming up with it, making choices that are unique to you as an artist, and actually making the piece
In regards of the Trump government scraping all trans inclusion in its queer information portion of its websites I have made this thing. Spread the word. Don’t let them pretend we never existed.
You caught me good brother @call-me-chips, you caught me, OKAY!!!! Here’s all my crushes starting from normal to progressively worse, it’s not bad right?!?! RIGHT?!?!
Every time I see AI art discourse I think of my new media teacher in college talking about remix culture.
I think about how much I love collage and how much it inspired me to keep going with art because sometimes all I can do is cut and paste.
I think if taking a few tracks I loved from a downloaded album and learning to use audacity to make something new.
I think about how much capitalism kills art.
So much so that we can’t even agree that it’s more messed up that life could be ruined by sharing creative energy.
No one will engage with the fact that maybe, just maybe, it’s messed up that a form of creation even has the possibility to make artists unable to live.
It makes me sad when people say it’s theft, abuse of other’s work, lazy… It’s art.
It’s as much art as when I’m drawing, painting, cutting up magazines, folding zines, making a mix tape, over painting a thrift store find, making book art.
The issue is it shouldn’t be paywalled, it shouldn’t be censored, or centralized. Just like the Internet itself honestly.
Human beings should all feel free to create and remix any fucking thing they want.
The AI algorithm is not the problem, it is as it has always been, capitalism.
Don’t want to lose your livelihood to a machine? Consider those who would use that machine against you in the first place. Side with free open source systems that do not generate profit. Actually consider why the problems exist and stop scapegoating and dismiss real actual tools for artists who are not traditional.
AI can make lovely stuff, I use it for references and to speed run sketches sometimes. I can input my art into certain things and run variations to find new directions for a sketch. I can visualize ideas, I can make something.
There’s no reason anyone should be opposed to that.
But then, people hate collage too. People hate Tumblr gifsets and image posts made from screenshots. Those old composite gifs are “cringe” but they also took a hell of a lot of work. Just stitching together a fantasy.
i think this post is confusing two types of arguments against ai art - arguments based on the artistic merit of ai art, and arguments based on the moral implication of using ai in general.
regarding the artistic merit- i think it’s incorrect to say that people who oppose ai art on creative basis only do so because they oppose “remixing”.
there is a difference between you, a thinking person, cutting and pasting parts of magazines and books and photos into a collage, or editing parts of songs into new music, and ai being fed pieces of art and creating something different with it- you, as a person, have a choice and there’s a meaning behind that choice.
there is no meaning behind ai choices. it’s algorithm. maybe you chose to give it those parts to combine, but why did it do it in this specific way? because algorithm. there’s no more thought behind it.
i don’t think people are wrong for questioning the merit of art without a meaningful choice behind it.
but, also, it’s a philosophical question without moral implications.
using ai however, has moral implications.
even without stealing people’s livelihoods by taking their jobs, no current ai model was trained without using uncompensated labor. the amount of data needed to train an ai model are too vast for any company to actually go through the process of gaining the concent, much less compensating, artists for the work they’re going to use for training. so essentially, all ai was trained on stolen labor.
you can hypothetically think up a perfect ai model that was only trained on freely given or compensated work, that is completely free and open source, and that will never be used to monetary gain either by stealing work to train on or by stealing jobs from real life artists, but the fact is… no such model exists.
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
