Marcel Duchamp | HOW TO SEE “Readymades” with MoMA curator Ann Temkin

One hundred years ago this month, Marcel Duchamp changed the art world forever by unveiling Fountain-a urinal presented as a "readymade" work of art. MoMA Chief Curator Ann Temkin explains how Duchamp forced us to rethink the role of art and the artist.
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[@superfly2449]

Saw the Duchamp bike wheel with my old dad. He walked over and gave it a spin. I think he did the right thing, but I’m glad none of the guards spotted us. (Good thing it wasn’t the urinal)

[@emmalichious08]

Marcel is my great, great, great grandfather. I have been doing research on my family and all of this is so interesting. My grandfather is George Duchamp and it’s all so amazing.

[@empithre]

"When I discovered ready-mades I thought to discourage aesthetics. In Neo-Dada they have taken my ready-mades and found aesthetic beauty in them. I threw the bottle-rack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty"

[@budtaylor7923]

The largest collection of art by Marcel Duchamp is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It's incredible. Also included are works by his siblings, artists as well.

[@FedeVox83]

As an art historian, a teacher of contemporary art and a big “fan” of Duchamp I want to thank you for this AMAZING video: it is just the perfect way to understand the immense contribution of Duchamp

[@abyssssbmusic1370]

i kind of like how the bicycle wheel has in common with a unicycle, that it's a seat and a wheel, but without the function of the chair and without the function of the wheel

[@wendirogers7814]

This is one of the best of the MoMA videos

[@murraykriner9425]

The highlighted piece has long fascinated me from the time I first viewed it in a text book many years ago. I really appreciate your clear and utterly plain explanation of his work being more about the creative process from initial inception to the methodical placement of sundry everyday item assembled in a set manner. The biggest smile was your remarks about just the act of proclamation transforming it into a work that defies not only imagination but any criticisms as well. Would send a critic to a local neighborhood bar to question if they really knew Art at All. Brilliant.

[@msarassavargas6185]

when the question "why is it art" comes up. just the discussion if it makes it art. one of the reasons why i love duchamp and Dada

[@swicheroo1]

What an unfortunate subtitle: How to see. The whole business of the avant garde art project, and specifically the Dada movement, is to unsee our ways of seeing.

[@idecantwellbarnes6707]

Thank you for this excellent talk. I love my virtual visits to MoMA.

[@ap3008]

Duchamp was all about challenging thinking and redefining, rethinking the idea of art. His work was more an exercise of thinking rather than an exercise of craft. The artist as a person with thought processes. The people who cannot see that what he did is an art have a particular and rather traditional definition of art. What is art to you?

[@intelligenceservices]

He wanted to take 'art' off it's high horse, mainly for himself I think, because although he spoke freely about his reasons, the public would only enshrine him as a precious and rare readymade himself.

[@eggsarantaduo]

the bike wheel in the room next to the dance by matisse: I bet duchamp would be pretty pissed off by this suggestive connection!

[@maxdoubled4800]

Woah. Yall are blowing my mind right now. Keep these videos coming. Yall are great!!!

[@annieannie4401]

That was an amazing explanation to the mystery of the idea of readymades. thank U.

[@karinliane547]

Thanks to introduce the. Ready made , Madame. ! 💯🕯️🌹♥️🌹🕯️💯

[@jojovcpb3736]

I do that sometimes when I get really stoned. I just took a huge work of art. It was effortless and magnificent all simultaneously.

[@fastfoodart5552]

love art. love dadaisme...love duchamp

[@rickmumma]

This is one of my favorite rooms at MoMA.

[@KateColors]

Ah, ha! Kind of like my family's sense of humor. I feel right at home.😀

[@BeatrixCor]

After learning about the concept of readymades that Duchamp made, Could we maybe consider the Art Basel Banana by Maurizio Cattelan that became famous a few years ago as a readymade? It seems to fit the general idea of a readymade at least.

[@ktmcgoogle7927]

I love duchamp, such a unique take on art and the world

[@Johnconno]

I've got the bicycle wheel and stool in the corner of my flat, made it in an hour. It's very...Amusing.

[@vladaoglada]

Is the stool an original one? What a very bright and fresh white paint on it, after 100 years... amazing 🙂 edit: ok, so it is a third version from 1951 😁

[@nanwilder2853]

Excuse me Ann, but a “collage” is a 2-Dimensional work on a flat substrate, like a painting. The Ready-mades are 3-Dimensional works, aka assemblages. Not collage, assemblage. I have adored the “artist’s brain” of Marcel DuChamp since I first saw his Ready-mades in Art History books as a teenager, long ago... His intelligence and humor still shine for me, in a world where many, still, do not “get” him. Thank you for your presentation !

[@rhondennis979]

So, if hanging anything in my garage by a piece of string with a catchy title is art, then I've got a museum to fill. 😂

[@StephenChovanec]

Thank you Ann!

[@teritowells5168]

Duchamp "readymades" it was about taking a ordinary object and changing it use and turning into art. His best quote was after you have done a few readymades, you have lot of time on your hands.

[@ug7000]

Thanks for the upload, very informative. :)

[@iaindrennan3552]

great video!

[@gualmicol6845]

Pushing boundaries and extending the scope of art, doing art and presenting it (showcasing, attaching "user instrucion" or whatever) are not necessarily all the same thing. It would be interesting to see what Marcel Duchamp thought and if the critics understood him.

[@mikloslegrady965]

Duchamp said that until his time painting was what you could see, that he made it intellectual. Today we know he then stopped painting, Duchamp made no paintings in 40 years after he made painting intellectual. It's when they tell us what to think while looking at work that you know the work is a failure. The point of a real work of art - is that we do not need to be told what to think, a real work speaks volumes at a glance. Think Anish Kapoor. Besides, Duchamp always said the Readymade are not art When asked how he came to choose the Readymade, Duchamp replied, “Please note that I didn’t want to make a work of art out of it … when I put a bicycle wheel on a stool … it was just a distraction. I didn’t have any special reason … or any intention of showing it, or describing anything. The word ‘Readymade’ thrusts itself on me then. It seemed perfect for these things that weren’t works of art, that weren’t sketches, and to which no term of art applies.” Duchamp knew that if a Readymade were art, finding an object would be equivalent to, and as valuable, as months of actual studio work; a troublesome speculation that obviously disturbed him as it has others ever since. At a 1998 Dia panel discussion Rosalind Krauss mentioned that (except for Mondrian and Seurat) Duchamp despised optical art and disliked artisanal work. We would be surprised to read that Shakespeare despised grammar, or Stravinsky loathed musical notes; these are things to respect, not to despise. It does seem like Duchamp was wrong and his ideas destroyed his ability to make art. Now tell me why this is such a wonderful thing. Jasper Johns wrote that Duchamp wanted to kill art “for himself” and we know he did, destroyed his ability to make art. Johns went on to say Duchamp tolerated, even encouraged the mythology around that ‘stopping’, “but it was not like that he said… He spoke of breaking a leg. ‘You didn’t mean to do it’ he said”. It is important to understand that if you say art is not worth making and repeat it often enough as Duchamp did, you will eventually believe it and lose interest in making art. Then, having succeeded in destroying art he poked at Étant donnés for the next twenty years, as if trying to revive a lost relationship.

[@christianegonbarnthaler1426]

super

[@hartmannvondunaburg6768]

He was really a great one, he made very earlier important #TimePhoneHacks

[@strategysprints]

So well done! Complex Ideas explained easy!

[@user-vt2jv1fq2x]

Wow..Thanks~ U r so kind~ It's not necessary with another docent~! Duchamp so awesome for me:~)

[@roggo_x]

Muy buen video, gracias por la traduccion al español desde argentina

[@Theboywiththedrone]

A new day but same friend 👍👍👍

[@JP-ij7rp]

Thank your for this video! So happy to have found you in my algorithm. Question...was Marcel Duchamp the pioneer of what we call memes today? Was he a troll? Was it all about being ironic? Or was it just a parody? I would appreciate your feedback

[@MenonDwarka]

I’d love to know how copyright intersects with readymades. Is the design of the original creator transformed by Duchamp’s signature?

[@stefanoguseli5975]

Yes

[@janie7242]

Keep looking at the nice painting of Matisse's next room! 🤨

[@deborahbuchanan3238]

I understand Marcel Duchamp was concerned with rebelling against the pretentious, profit driven world art had come to inhabit and the world was in general. He was anti capitalism and war and was trying to create a new reality, way of thinking and these works are an expression of this.

[@rayesposito3470]

ha ha, with all art forms they are open to critics if all abilities to mock, judge, praise.., I'm not to bothered at any negative comments about Duchamp, however, he did these things while everyone else didn't...

[@Audiofreund2]

duchamp is the opposite of beuys. beuys made a piece "the silence of duchamp is overrated". both are pretty big in what they did.

[@jaytamondong2591]

I LOVE MARCEL DUCHAMP ARTS

[@martynwonder]

But why do i feel like the best conseptual artists still rely on perceptual aesthetics ?

[@robertgallegos1161]

Do you Think Duchamp would enjoy this video? Does the Earth beneath Rouen have an eerie rumble beneath the stone and grass?

[@GaryALucas]

I thought Peter Greenaway suggested something similar with his frames. That anything seen through them could be considered art. the exhibit being a type of frame. John Cage also suggested something similar with his '4' 33" ' , any environmental sound was the piece. I interpret that as art is in the mind, yes, the idea is the art, in that case. And of course Marcel Duchamp initiated this train of thought, in the modern era.

[@DrRonArt]

Marcel Duchamp liked the idea that an idea could be a work of visual art. ~Ann Temkin

[@Sundayjean]

It’s as if, in the moment of creation he had a delightful sense of humor.

[@robertmcpartland3638]

Really enjoyable talk, but (with considerable hindsight), his work might be better understood today as a green button for the 20th century cartesian, conceptualised, unembodied mind; witty and seductive to the "intellect" (non visual left brain) but nihilistic - The Brides etc. and The Illuminating Gas (his last work) He was a charming, urbane and a (financial..maybe more) fox who carved his own place in art in response to rejection by his peers, but who personally preferred chess.

[@xdszhang]

Was The Fountain dismissed at the beginning, then Duchamp threw a tantrum? He certainly already had that power to force others to bend, He succeeded…until now.

[@karinliane547]

Is it. Art , or does it means real. Life ? 🌈🕯️♥️🌹♥️🕯️🌈.

[@TheBassHeavy]

I'd love to see this work in real life.

[@priscillabourne9732]

why is Duchamp's alter ego's name wrong?

[@jorgesicre8268]

the reason my art is remarkable is because people remark about it. Whether it was my solo at Cafe Largo or the Long Beach World Trade center where it was reported to me, or the running commentary on the video on Video or all the people honking at me as I worked on public art. People comment on this bloke too; I have a postcard of him I picked up in a Hollywood club. He's holding a briefcase or something that someone superimposed, "I am not a role model" on it!

[@jorgesicre8268]

I meant Vimeo

[@timetobenotdo]

Everyone says Duchamp was genius (I don’t disagree) and yet no one ever says anything deep or interesting about his work, ever. It’s the same surface fluff over and over again. Please show me an exception.

[@kennethmatthew9638]

thats what is called obscuritism, a series of articulate phrases to discribe what is in observed reality as; a wheel a fucking wheel

[@doylesaylor]

Interesting to bring up DuChamp as anti retinal. He’s not saying much if the ready mades are just something to look at. Let’s take a moment to investigate him saying he is going out side painting in the sort of conceptual realm. This is asserting a sense of the meaning of mental activity. But also very vague. So while the objects look real DuChamp is not especially concerned to really say what exactly contemplation is. Rather he claims as ‘important’ a manufactured object can be aestheticized. Sort of like a street photographer goes out and shoots anything and it’s art. The street photographer is using a realism structure to do ‘anything’. Duchamp is really saying consumer items that people accumulate are art as they pile up in a space. Since he was inside the commercial art market he got paid generously for his work, but claiming the average persons pile of consumers ‘readymades’ is art for sale would not generate an income. So besides being ‘conceptual’ the ‘art’ is really just being part of the market place. However, painting has two important market place transcending influences. Realist painting and abstraction. Conceptually DuChamp can’t account for why abstract art suddenly appeared in the 19th century out of realist painting. So his cubist work is superficial copying efforts. Nor can DuChamp who is saying the ‘concept’ is the art able to distinguish some sort of antirealism boundary to that. I mean a concept is a mental act outside vision, and DuChamp can’t say if his concept of art is real or antirealism. That is to my mind a severe critique of his claim about readymades are important. They can’t be used in a ‘big important’ way.

[@jorgesicre8268]

Nude Descending a Staircase is a masterpiece, but it's an easel painting. As TS Eliot said, "that art is greatest which remains closest to tradition." Anyone can fill a gallery floor with sand. It takes genius to invent a new system of perspective, as I have done. Why do you think a book like Tom Wolf's 'The Painted Word' made the New York Times best seller list? The people have spoken. Also, my art isn't bankrolled by the CIA!

[@krisscanlon4051]

I enjoy Marcel Duchamp simply because he takes the piss out of pretentious art. The Dada movement means the world to me. When I wasn't living very right it was enjoyment in a land of addicted misery. I've gotten through that misery but Marcel remains.

[@mojiri]

Bad Art contest : Picasso, Munch, Duchamp participated???

[@johnmackenzie3030]

This wheel is not a true ready made - it has been bolted onto a white seat. The snow shovel is a pure ready made. And what an awesome snow shovel.

[@kristinab1078]

I tried. I really did, but I find his art uninspiring. However, the Matisse in the background...my eye went right to it!

[@arisumego]

Marcel Duchamp's readymades represent a commodification and fetishization of everyday objects, reflecting capitalism’s ability to absorb and commodify rebellion and critique, and are, essentially, not art, as even the artist himself espoused to the deaf ears of the art establishment. ### The Nature of Art and Commodity In traditional Marxist theory, art is seen as an expression of human labor and creativity, embodying the essence and skill of the artist. The readymades, being industrially produced objects not altered or crafted by Duchamp's hand, challenge this notion. They do not result from labor in the Marxist sense but are instead selected. This selection process, devoid of laborious transformation or creation, positions the readymades more as commodities than as traditional art. ### The Fetishism of Commodities Marx discusses the "fetishism of commodities" in "Capital," referring to the way commodities are imbued with value beyond their practical use, obscuring the labor that produced them. Readymades, by being recontextualized in the art world, could be seen as the ultimate expression of commodity fetishism-they are literally everyday commodities presented without modification as valuable art, their "aura" not coming from the labor of creation but from the conceptual choice of the artist. ### Capitalism and the Incorporation of Rebellion The widespread scholarly acceptance and celebration of Duchamp's readymades can be interpreted as an example of how capitalism is adept at incorporating and neutralizing forms of rebellion. Duchamp's critique of the art establishment and the very concept of art as a commodified form could be seen as an act of rebellion. However, the art market's absorption of this critique, transforming the readymades into highly valued art objects, demonstrates capitalism's capacity to commodify dissent, turning a critique of the art market into a lucrative segment of that market itself. ### The Role of the Art Market The transformation of readymades from mundane objects into celebrated artworks underscores the role of the art market in determining value, independent of the labor, skill, or intent behind an object. This phenomenon reflects a capitalist logic where market forces and speculation, rather than inherent qualities or labor, dictate value. The high prices fetched by readymades at auctions exemplify this, highlighting how art has become a field dominated by speculative investment rather than an arena for genuine aesthetic or philosophical engagement. ### Conclusion From a Marxist perspective, the readymades could be seen not as genuine art but as manifestations of the capitalist system's ability to commodify all aspects of life, including criticism of itself. The scholarly acceptance and celebration of Duchamp's readymades, rather than signaling a broadening of artistic horizons, might instead reflect the inevitable commodification of art in a capitalist society, where anything can be turned into a commodity, including the critique of commodification itself. This narrative underscores the complex interplay between art, labor, and capital, challenging us to reconsider the values and criteria that define art in contemporary society.

[@katrostorm3075]

Everything and anything can be art if you say it is... My question is - What is not art?

[@nanwilder2853]

KS : Murder and State-murder, War, are not Art, obviously... Barbaric destruction = the opposite of Art/creativity.

[@03-abhinavrijit90]

kya scam hai bc

[@waterglas21]

Duchamp is a philosopher not an artist!!

[@Doppe1ganger]

Intellectually one of the greats, but not my thing. That is to say, i very much respect what he meant for art, but ultimately i reject it because there's no soul to it, i find it boring, kind of like a stupid joke, once you understand the pun the joke is done.

[@eloise4484]

They are still as dull as dishwater a hundred years on...

[@alexbotkin3182]

I think that Duchamp is simply a thief. Every "Readymade" was made by someone who regarded the work and craft as a work of art. Each of these is designed or created by a person or perhaps a "collective", to use a currently artsy term, for whom the object represented an achievement of intellect, craft, and insight. By declaring himself as the arbiter of what is art he has stolen their talent and work and presented it as his own.

[@veritasdude1358]

I also have a urinal that I threw away while renovating. Wait! ... was that also ART?! 😂😂🤢🤢

[@mauriciocruzvideo]

I find it incredible that this curator (of the moma) is wrong in almost everything she says; time goes by and commonplaces keep the central idea of the readymade mummified what's more, that one with the wheel is the poorer version if compared with the original (I mean the first one)

[@arisumego]

1:26 this is kind of a terrible and shockingly ignorant appraisal of Duchamp’s work as a painter, which was innovative and startling even for artists of his time, such as his “Nude Descending a Staircase” causing such a stir at its debut that they asked him to alter it because they felt it was too controversial before he ended up pulling it altogether. glossing over events like these in Duchamp’s eventual pivot into conceptual art, coming from someone who appears as though she should be an expert on it, is baffling to me. “Nude Descending a Staircase” is undeniably among his most famous and beloved works, alongside his toilet and the bicycle readymade. idk just a terrible take from someone who should know better but either doesn’t or thought it was suitable to give such an abbreviated but ultimately inaccurate take for this video maybe it’s because the moma doesn’t have any of his greatest work, just his readymades, so they feel the need to proselytize them over his other masterpieces?

[@puddingtapioca1060]

He hung up a shovel, called it art, and now people are calling it revolutionary .....

[@johnbrocado1083]

youre not good at much are you?

[@peterfoerderer8224]

Why bother with this when you can go to Walmart, buy a few items and call it art.

[@pedromarques3539]

Duchamp sai the ready made is the future Eff painting...and the whole world is shouting today painting is dead! Some rich white bourgeois payed a million dollars for a Duchamp and it becomes a ridiculous trend. Duchamp was great no doubt but anyone applying the same concept is simply a practice of plagiarism.

[@CatharticCreation]

seems like he was an artistic hack to me. least fave art era by far. ugly and boring art.

[@ninasimpson7669]

Duchamp was not capable of making great paintings and naturally, he abandoned this rather than keep producing inferior paintings.

Duchamp was a very lazy artist and he didn't like to get dirty his hands...

[@musikalitet]

i just dont like art. i find it so stupid..... i love flowers as art the power of nature and...