Just Art It

TAoN No. 208: A timeless lesson from a favorite trickster. And more.

Apr 14, 2026

Five-Way Portrait of Marcel Duchamp (Portrait multiple de Marcel Duchamp), Broadway Photo Shop, New York City, 21 June 1917. Public Domain / Wikipedia.

A big Marcel Duchamp retrospective has just opened at the Museum of Modern Art, and that means we can look forward to lots of fresh writing and thinking about Duchamp’s work.

Or at least I hope that’s the case: I’m very pro-Duchamp and always happy to learn more about one of my favorite tricksters. I take it as a good sign that Times critic Holland Carter has already used the exhibition as an excuse to pronounce Duchamp more influential than Picasso! (Or, for a different take, here’s a critic wondering if we’ve become too reverent of the irreverent Duchamp.)

But so far the most pleasing response I’ve encountered is this piece (also in The Times) by Blake Gopnik, with this key passage:

Duchamp helps us understand that “art” shouldn’t be thought of as a noun that picks out certain kinds of objects, but as a verb: We “art” absolutely any object at all by using it to trigger thoughts and conversation. …
When Duchamp “art-ed” the most unlikely, even shocking of objects — a urinal — he was celebrating the power of that verb.

The referenced urinal is of course Duchamp’s famous piece, “Fountain” — an actual urinal that he signed (with a fake name). While this was initially mocked and derided and dismissed, it gradually became recognized as a profound gesture that moved a boundary line between art and the everyday — and example of how trickster figures make culture.

Photograph of Duchamp’s *Fountain* (1917) by Alfred Stieglitz.. Public Domain / Wikipedia

Gopnik reminds us that pre-”Fountain,” Duchamp was already presenting “commonplace objects,” such as a bottle rack and a bicycle wheel, as a category of art he called “readymades.” The first readymade to draw much attention was a store-bought shovel that Duchamp’s studio mate pronounced “the most beautiful object I have ever seen.”

*In Advance of the Broken Arm*, a readymade artwork by Marcel Duchamp, on display at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. Depicted is a 1964 replica of the artwork from the Galleria Schwarz edition. Public Domain / Wikipedia

What I did not know about the 1917 First Annual Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, where “Fountain” was meant to be displayed but ultimately kicked out, is that it had an unusual organizing format: The works included were displayed in the alphabetical order of their 1,300 creators’ names. This was apparently Duchamp’s idea, and presumably meant to be a kind of grand leveler, a fully objective schema. But in practice it proved more controversial, at the time, than “Fountain,” Gopnik suggests; critics hated it.

Still, you can see how an alphabetized art show implies the same questioning spirit that animated the readymades — a potential to essentially create art from the everyday, through the shear force of perception, curiosity, consideration. Gopnik quotes philosopher Alva Noë making the point that an art object should prompt us to “look harder, look longer, ask questions, interrogate, try to make something of it.”

And when I say “art object,” I mean any object that’s been art-ed. Gopnik again:

I’d say that “Fountain,” as the capstone to Duchamp’s entire installation of the Independent, celebrates a centuries-old tradition that has got us using anything at all — a marital portrait, a prayerful “Saint Francis,” even in the end a urinal — to spark art’s signature conversations.

I can only add that my interest, of course, isn’t in dragging down or undermining the status of art. It’s in elevating the status of the everyday. So this week, channel your inner Duchamp: Notice something that’s worth a conversation — and art it!

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IN OTHER NEWS

Thank to a tip from Karla Starr, I’ve tentatively opened a Bookshop.org affiliate account and “shop.” I’ve only listed a few titles so far, but I’ll continue to add relevant books, and if you buy through the shop I get a cut. Bookshop.org also gives a cut to local booksellers. This is another step in my ongoing efforts to make this project financially sustainable, so consider this a mix of full disclosure and news :) Link here. What might be useful with this experiment? Feedback is welcome!
The latest edition of The Times’ 10-Minute Challenge features a piece from the I Spy picture book series, really interesting!
“Yoko Ono’s Play it by Trust (1966/2011) is an all-white, interactive chessboard that functions as a metaphor for the futility of war.” There’s now an online chess-bot version.
1950s Milwaukee bus tickets.
“Sidewalk Joy spots are free, curated public galleries, exchanges and displays. .. Examples include Free Little Art Galleries, Puzzle Exchanges, Toy Swaps, year-round and often updated yard displays, Wishing Trees, and more!” Via.
The “absurdist cartoons and greeting cards” of Glen Baxter. Good stuff!
Jake Henzler a.k.a. Boy Knits World’s book Knit the City “highlights buildings around the world through a series of building block-like patterns.” Via.
An A24 movie about liminal space:
OKAY THAT’S IT!

As always, I value your feedback (suggestions, critiques, positive reinforcement, constructive insults directed at me, not at anyone else, etc.), as well as your tips or stories or personal noticing rituals, things we need a word for, and of course your icebreakers: consumed@robwalker.net. Or use the comments.
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