Pinned
When I was a very suicidal trans activist in Texas, Benjamin Sisko saying “sure, you would [die for your people]. Dying gets you off the hook. The question is: are you willing to live for your people?” changed and possibly saved my life. It’s up there with “if we are going to be damned, let us be damned for who we really are” from Picard. Star Trek not only shows us a better world, it teaches us how to make it there
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 was looking at contact paper because I have some shelves to line like some kind of adult and while I was innocently browsing, I came across this.
Horrifying. But it got worse.
Imagine coming home from school and your mom’s all “Hey honey I redid your room!”
NOT THE JALLPAPER
Shout out to everyone on my dashboard who is enthusiastically talking about whatever the fuck theyre into that I don't recognise. Love your enthusiasm, keep going, I don't know what's happening but i support u
Recalling that interview with Andrew Robinson talking abt seeing Alexander Siddig for the first time and going "god I NEED to fuck him" and I think I'm finally starting to see what he was on abt. the golden bambi eyes...the prey animal energy he radiates...he's destructible like an environment to me
i learned that actor Danny Trejo has the most on-screen deaths of anyone in Hollywood history, with 65. Followed by Christopher Lee (60), Lance Henriksen (51), Vincent Price (41), Dennis Hopper (41), Boris Karloff (41), and John Hurt (39). (x)
Yet poor Sean Bean is stuck with the reputation for dying in every movie. Unfair.
Give him time, he still has many years of dying yet to come.
Also there’s the question of density vs quantity. If you make a hundred movies and die in 50, and someone else makes 30 movies and dies in 30, the first one has died more, but the second one has died more often per movie.
It’s the DPM ratio that really counts, IMO.
65/402 16% Danny Trejo 60/282 21% Christopher Lee 51/259 20% Lance Henriksen 41/211 19% Vincent Price 41/205 20% Dennis Hopper 41/204 20% Boris Karloff 39/209 19% John Hurt 33/117 28% Sean Bean
I’m so proud of the statistical side of tumblr for coming through on this.
I'm glad that people are still having fun on tumblr even after we found out about the frightening ghoul that reblogs posts but doesn't say anything
So today I watched this interview with the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast and they demonstrate the phenomenon "space ship acting"
and they all go
and it just cracks me up, ESPECIALLY Sir Patrick Stewart
I love when they just throw themselves across the room
Jonathon Frakes said that once during one of these scenes Patrick Stewart leaned over to him and said “I’m a Shakespearean trained actor you know”
"i can't benefit from oppressive power structures, i'm literally nice :)" is a disturbingly common sentiment on here and if u express it then i can never trust u again
