Is it Art?

The work of Duchamp, should I even call it art at first glance, appears to have little to no
artistic purpose or value. I recognized Marcel Duchamp from a previous humanities class I took
when studying Dadaism. The concept of Dadaism dates back to The Great War era, summarized
from MoMA Learning as an artistic and literary movement that grew out of dissatisfaction with
traditional social values and conventional artistic practices during World War I which in other
words, is a self-proclaimed anti-art that intentionally mimicked the value of traditional art
(Marcel Duchamp and the Readymade, n.d.). One could almost compare Duchamps work to
present day memes that are cleverly used to convey relatable and humorous messages on the
internet, and can even be considered the inspiration of todays trolling defined as to make a
deliberately offensive or provocative online posting with the aim of upsetting someone or
eliciting an angry response from them. (Google, 2016). Though this form is not something
tangible to frame and hang up as aesthetic dcor, it is a clever, entertaining, humorous, emotion
and thought-provoking concept that ultimately defies the typical expectations of art. Duchamp

purposely made his creations to receive negative reactions, and succeeded in doing so in a
fashion of the psychological mode of Jungs dimensions of art. This term is used in describing
how artists want their creations to produce a specific reaction or result from others. The first
thought in my head when looking at Duchamps L.H.O.O.Q. was that this piece was not art, but
instead something a child would do to faces in a magazine-draw mustaches and beards on
women for a good laugh-as it appeared Duchamp had done to the Mona Lisa. This however, is a
contradiction within a form of art itself. Some would say, The viewer should be wary of reading
too far into something that is really only grounded in speculation or possibly creating a logical
meaning that simply isnt there (L.H.O.O.Q., n.d.). By mimicking art while producing a
humorous or other emotional outcome, this can absolutely be considered an art form especially
as the concept continues today.

References
Google. (n.d.). Retrieved July 25, 2016, from https://www.google.com/#q=define trolling
L.H.O.O.Q. (n.d.). Retrieved July 15, 2016, from
http://www.toutfait.com/unmaking_the_museum/LHOOQ.html
Medieval memes - Google Search. (n.d.). Retrieved July 25, 2016, from
https://www.google.com/search?q=medieval memes
MoMA Learning. (n.d.). Retrieved July 25, 2016, from
https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/dada/marcel-duchamp-and-thereadymade