IncomingSoap5

despite everything.

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’

Howdy!

I’ve never seen a shit-eating grin performed by anything without a mouth before

parents be like you can’t imagine how hard it is for us to deal with your mental illness

parents be like *annoyed sigh* you’re suicidal again? really?

Go to the Wikipedia page of Schizoid Personality Disorder for a beautiful image of the sea

woag

I honestly think the original ah lads not again post is the funniest

That's where that is from??????

Dysphoric? Tired of being seen as the wrong gender? Tired of feeling lost and depressed? Perhaps it's finally time for a change. Be who you want to be.

I need a pretty woman to pin me down and whisper suggestions into my ear and I need to not be able to think on my own without her when she's done with me... I need her to impact my entire way of thinking so bad that I don't even remember how I used to think before her... I need to not remember my own name without her reminding me.

I'm very normal about this.

PLEASE

“Progress Shark” outside the Australian Museum, ahead of Sydney Mardi Gras/World Pride Festival 2023.

More flags should be inflatable sharks

Ok this is making me go insane because. that’s a photoshop. it absolutely is, someone’s edited a progress pride flag onto the shark.

you can see spots where the red is misaligned with the top of the body and even extends slightly beyond it. the lines of the flag don’t conform to the shape of the shark’s body at all. you can see the gills through it as if it’s at like 70% opacity.

but like. the progress pride shark is real and it looks like this:

yknow. cause it’s a flag wrapped around a model shark.

why was this edited????? it’s a real thing but for some reason someone edited a digital flag over it instead of just using a real photo of the real thing??? why????

also, its sister tweet:

How could you forget:

Had to add this gem

Pouring one out for Poison Junior.

What I love about this is seeing that he's clearly a hockey skater. Now, I don't know shit about fuck when it comes to cold slippy antics, but what I notice is different between hockey skaters and nearly all other skaters is that hockey skaters essentially run on the ice. Any other skater is trying to glide, perform, or be otherwise smooth. Create a new type of mobility, but on ice. But hockey skaters? The floor is slippery but that's why they've got knives on their feet, so it's running time. Run run run run.

So this is like playing tag on ice, except the one guy you're trying to get is magically not on ice. And I think that's pretty neat.

He’s also making really good use of the stoppers on the front of his skates. You can clearly see several times that when he starts juking and running he’s not actually running with the wheels in contact with the ground – he’s tipped forward to run on the rubber stoppers, which will give him more traction on the slippery surface. He can change direction faster because none of his kinetic energy is going into countering the inertia of spinning wheels.

I don’t know if the picks on the front of ice skates are used similarly (because ice hockey is not so much of a national pastime in Australia) but I wouldn’t be surprised. But I spent a bit of time with a roller derby team, and I recognised that particular stopper run :)

toe pick!

thank your local trans girl for being alive right now

good job soldier. now turn around and thank your local trans boy for being alive right now

tumblr search still broken but also nonbinary people! go thank them too!

Sometimes u just gotta make yourself a quesadilla and move the fuck on

The worst part about this post??? People saying “with cheese!” Bitch cheese is literally in the word if it had no cheese it would be a dilla