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In May of 2016, teenage friends Kevin Nguyen and TJ
Khayatan visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
And while they did see some art they liked,
they were unimpressed when they came
across a piece very similar to this one
by the artist Mike Kelly.
It's what it looks like--
stuffed animals arranged on a blanket.
Kevin said later in an interview,
is this really what you call art?
And TJ said, we looked at it, and we
were like, this is pretty easy.
We could make this ourselves.
So they decided to play around a bit,
placing a jacket on the floor and then a baseball cap
to see if either would draw attention.
Then, one of them put his glasses
on the floor underneath a wall label explaining
the theme of the gallery and stepped aside.
People started to gather around them,
and someone even took pictures.
TJ posted some pics to Twitter, and it started to spread.
A couple of days later, SF MoMA responded
from their official Twitter saying,
do we have a Marcel Duchamp in our midst?
They were referring to Duchamp's series of works he called,
ready-made ordinary objects that he, the artist,
designated to be works of art.
The most famous of these is "Fountain"
from 1917, a standard urinal of the time, turned on its side,
signed and dated, R. Mutt, 1917, and put on a pedestal.
Now the backstory here is important.
Duchamp had arranged through a friend
to submit this under a pseudonym to the newly established
Society of Independent Artists, which he himself had helped
found.
The whole point of the society was
that they'd accept whatever the members submitted
no matter what.
Except when the board of directors saw "Fountain",
they said it could not be considered a work of art,
that it was indecent, and then voted
to exclude it from the show.
Duchamp was furious, resigned in protest.
And he and his friends got "Fountain" back,
had it photographed by Alfred Stieglitz,
and published the photos in a new journal they created.
In it, the editors wrote, "whether Mr. Mutt,
with his own hands made the "Fountain" has no importance.
He chose it.
He took an ordinary article of life,
placed it so that its useful significance disappeared
under the new title and point of view,
and created a new thought for that object."
Exactly what Kevin and TJ were doing.
In defense of "Fountain" the poet Guillaume Apollinaire
wrote in 1918, "the viewpoint of the Society of Independent
Artists is evidently absurd, for it arises from the untenable
point of view that art cannot ennoble an object."
And that's a critical point here,
because that's all art does really.
We take simple, everyday materials
and subject them to transformations
large and small, as large as making a blank piece of fabric
into a painting or as small as positioning
an object in an art gallery.
These transformations ennoble these materials,
making them into something more than the sum of their parts.
Like the glasses prank, "Fountain" was a test.
In 1917, it was a test to see what
the institutions of the time, even the most progressive ones,
could bear.
And it failed.
They wouldn't exhibit it.
It was in its rejection that the object slowly rose to fame.
The original work was lost, but Duchamp's
sanctioned a number of replicas later on,
after his own star had risen and the urinal story persisted
in art historical memory.
These replicas sit-in museums around the world
and still serve as a test, challenging each visitor
to consider its legitimacy as a museum or the object.
They continue to be good barometers for us
as we think about what art is exactly what it can be,
and what we want it to be.
Oh, hey, and one of those replicas
was peed on at the Tate Modern in 2000
by collaborating performance artist Cai Yuan and Jian Jun
Xi.
Actually, they only peed on the vitrine
surrounding it, in a way, attempting
to return the urine all to its original purpose,
and in hitting its barrier, highlighting
how museum culture has fetishized and protected
this object beyond the artist's original intentions.
And while I cannot say I like or approve of this peeing
performance, it does reask the original questions posed
by Duchamp's "Fountain"-- what is it that makes one thing
ordinary and another extraordinary?
Furthermore, it shows us that art works,
even as they sit in museums under glass,
continue to shift in the way that we understand them.
And let's be clear.
The museum did not invite this particular performance.
But museums and galleries often do invite artists to do
performance-based work in the galleries,
which sets up a perfect scenario for those looking to do an art
prank--
not that I'm recommending it.
There's a long history of artists not only performing
in galleries, but also inviting participation in their work,
like Erwin Wurm's One-minute Sculptures, where he directs
you to pose with an object or a set of objects
in a particular way and to hold the pose for one minute.
It's funny, but it's not a joke--
or at least not entirely.
These make me think about the people who are historically
depicted and artworks throughout the centuries--
important people holding unnatural poses
and displaying their riches.
Artists like Claes Oldenburg have long
played with our expectations of what
we're supposed to see when we walk into a gallery
or admire on the lawn of a museum.
In 1969, Jannis Kounellis put 12 horses into an art gallery
in Rome.
He's associated with arte povera,
a movement defined by the use of humble materials drawn
from everyday life, but presented
with a level of intensity that sets them apart,
ennobling those materials-- or, in this case, horses.
As the 20th century progressed, more and more artists
made art that questioned the systems and structures
behind art in what came to be called institutional critique.
They made works revealing the money and politics
behind museums and the ways that architecture, and even
the guards, impact and inform your experience.
There's even been art addressing how
institutional critique has itself
become institutionalized.
But OK, so the artist, Andrea Fraser,
who took visitors on fake tours at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art in the late 1980s wrote an article in 2005
about institutional critique.
She argues that artists, in their critique,
have only served to expand the boundaries of the institution
to such an extent that there's no real separation
between the art world and the real world.
And rather than thinking of the institution as specific places,
organizations, or individuals, she
proposes it's now more of a social field.
The institution, she argues, is us.
Fraser says, "every time we speak of the institution
as other than us, we disavow our role
in the creation and perpetuation of its conditions.
It's not a question of being against the institution.
We are the institution.
It's a question of what kind of institution
we are, what kind of values we institutionalize,
what forms of practice we reward,
and what kinds of rewards we aspire to."
When we think about it this way, we
can see TJ and Kevin as embodying the institution
of art and their glasses as a way of performing
the institution of art.
They're not outsiders storming the system.
They're part of it.
They're asking questions about what
art is, what it isn't, and what they want it to be.
And we're all part of it, as we look at art,
and figure out if we take it seriously,
if we find meaning in it, if we like it or if we don't.
I am not saying these pranks are art.
For me, there are jokes that reveal something about art.
And sometimes, art functions similarly.
But I think Duchamp's joke is better than the glasses joke.
It's more careful, considered, and sustained.
Now, it's easy to laugh at the people taking the art
prank seriously.
But I think those are the real heroes of the story,
because the art isn't in the glasses.
The art is what happens in the space between you
and the glasses, just as it exists between you
and a Renaissance painting.
The prank victims are paying close attention
to what's around them, searching for meaning where it may or may
not exist.
You may look at Teddy bears on a blanket and think it's bogus,
and that's fine.
The art just isn't there between you and at work.
But if it is, and even if it is for something not intended
to be art, in this cold, dark universe, I say, good on you.
And the next time you walk into a gallery
and see something you think is ridiculous, maybe
think about what you've been trained to expect
when you walk into a museum.
What around you is informing your opinion?
And see yourself as an active agent
in determining what it is, why it is,
and whether you, as the institution, accept it.
Thanks to [INAUDIBLE] for inspiring this video topic.
And thanks also to our patrons who make the series possible,
especially our grand master of the arts, Indianapolis Holmes
Realty.
To support our show, go to patreon.com/artassignment,
and pledge a monthly amount.
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by Nathaniel Russell.
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