Artists have taken raw material and created masterpieces. Modern artists have taken a
bed, a teacup and a bicycle wheel and done the same. This video is called Transforming
Everyday Objects. A theme we will explore using three works. This is Marcel Duchamp's
Bicycle Wheel. Duchamp created it in 1913 and it has been in MoMA's collection for almost
fifty years. It looks a lot like a bicycle wheel on a stool because it's a bicycle wheel
on a stool. But much more interesting than the way it looks is the ideas associated with
this work. It was one of many works Duchamp called Readymades. A shovel, a bottle rack,
a hat rack, a coat rack and a bicycle wheel. Readymades challenged every definition of
art ever. Art is handmade by the artist. It's a normal bicycle wheel, it's a normal stool.
These are already made objects. Art is beautiful. If you want to look at a bicycle wheel upside
down, stuck in a stool and find that beautiful, it's possible but I think we're on the wrong
track. Duchamp in fact criticized so many modern artists as being in his words, retinal.
In other words, eye candy. Something to look at. And if you introduce your taste, you go
back to the old ideals of taste and taste is the great enemy of art. Of course, Duchamp's
own taste is critical here. Duchamp's a trouble maker. We're talking about an artist who questions
every single aspect of everything that is stated as a fact. Duchamp was forcing the
art world to define what was art. His readymades paved the way for modern art for decades.
Twenty years after Duchamp tried to shock the world with a bicycle wheel, Meret Oppenheim
was about to do the same with a teacup. In 1936, after having tea with Pablo Picasso
and Dora Maar, returns to her studio and creates this. This object was created at sort of this
perfect storm moment. There were all these artists looking at the world in a totally
new way. Oppenheim, a 22-year old art student, had already caught the attention of Andre
Breton, the founder of Surrealism. Breton and the Surrealists believed there was a crisis.
Society had become stuck. They believed Surrealism could shock people out of the limits of reality.
As Breton put it, "we must not hesitate to bewilder sensation." An iron with nails. A
metronome with an eye. A fur-covered teacup. The idea that, if you alter an object, it
alters your perception of what that object is. Oppenheim's teacup was viewed as threatening,
repulsive. A woman even fainted. Breton declared it the perfect Surrealist object. Oppenheim
claimed, "it was a fluke...I had been making fur-covered jewelry to make a little money.
I showed a piece to Picasso and Dora Maar and they joked that anything could be covered
in fur. Today, Meret Oppenheim's fluke remains the definitive Surrealist object. Twenty years
later in New York, art was being very serious. It was called Abstract Expressionism. It was
brooding. It was personal. Enter Robert Rauschenberg. You have to have a lot of time to feel sorry
for yourself if you're going to be a good abstract expressionist. And this was his response
to Abstract Expressionism. He called it "Bed," because it was his quilt and pillow. It was
called art because it was on the wall. "Painting relates to both art and life. I try to act
in the gap between the two." Critics didn't know what to call it. Was it a painting? was
it a sculpture? Rauschenberg ended up calling it a combine. "It was the economy. I didn't
have anything to paint on." Rauschenberg painted on quilts, pillows, newspapers, bald eagles,
garbage, pictures. He helped art to be more than just paint on a canvas. Now it could
be, well, a bed on a wall. "Bed." "Object." And "Bicycle Wheel." Transforming everyday
objects.