Marcel Duchamp Research Paper

Marcel Duchamp is a French surrealist artist, and widely known as a sculptor and a painter who has been involved in the Dada movement. He strongly sought to decipher the world in new ways by appropriating the normalities of life as to form various perspective on this one object, which challenges the fixed ideals of the artworld as well as questioning the definition of art. His artmaking process involve readymades where ordinary manufactured objects that the artist select and modify, as an antidote to what he called "retinal art". By simply choosing the object and repositioning or joining, titling and signing it, the Found object became art. This is what makes readymades so significantly alluring and domineering as art, however, readymades were …show more content…
The concept of readymades were fairly new, therefore, the public were awkward and negatively perceived the subjects of readymades, especially the ‘Fountain’. Moreover, it was rejected from the art world and dubbed it controversial due to its unhygienic characteristic as a bathroom fixture, and was considered to be far too inappropriate to display in a gallery. The ‘Fountain’ was also seen as being a bisexual piece, with slight male and female qualities due to its hip-like …show more content…
Duchamp reproduced Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’ on a postcard by altering the original feature of ‘Mona Lisa’ by sketching a moustache and a goatee over Mona Lisa’s lip and chin using a pencil. This humorously captures Duchamp’s perception on the classic representation of Mona Lisa, exposing his new interpretation of the artworld that ‘art’ is more than a visual product. The readymade was re-titled to L.H.O.O.Q which is translated as ‘She has a hot ass’, hinting Duchamp’s rebel against the traditions of art with a tinge of humour. It endows the Mona Lisa with masculine attributes as well as alluding to Leonardo’s purported homosexuality and also gesturing at the androgynous nature of creativity. This particular artwork concerns with gender role which has been dubbed socially controversial throughout time. However, the stereotypical perceptions of gender roles are challenged by reversing the roles of a man to a woman, as breaks the line between gender roles and introduces a whole new concept where the idea of gender is widened. The art society at the time did not accept this and considered it obscene, and was not positive about it being hanged for exhibition therefore, it was rejected. Moreover, the audience considered it as shock art, due to its mildly indecent title and comical