The day art died

Art died in April 1917.  We can thank Marcel Duchamp for that.  His urinal in Society of Independent Artists exhibit in 1917, signed R. Mutt was the final nail in the coffin.

I bring this up now because other artists are still kicking that corpse.

Take the London Duo Jake and Dino Chapman.  They have long been poking the lifeless body of art with a stick.  Of course the stick is shaped like a dildo and the body dressed up like a clown, but you get the idea.  Their latest work is a revamping of Adolf Hitler’s watercolors.   The show is entitled “If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be“, and is essentially the duo defacing Hitler’s original watercolors with rainbows, stars and hearts.

Personally I have issues with this.  I have issues with the ready-made as well.  Every first year art student gets asked this question but very few can answer.  The question is “what is art?”  I think I have a fairly good answer which I’d like to share “Art is any human manipulated item that the manipulator intends to be art”  This can be broken down further.

For something to be considered art, it must be manipulated by a human.  A tree is not art.  A Bonsai is.  A tree may be beautiful but it is just a tree.  As soon as someone starts messing with it, it becomes something more.

The other key point is intent.  You cannot walk into a room, and call the thermostat on the wall art.  No matter how well designed or integrated that thermostat is unless the creator says that was their intent.

This definition is not without flaws.  For instance it requires some sort of input from the artist and personally I think that art should be able to stand on its own.  A good painting is a good painting regardless of who did it.  The reverse is equally true.  A shitty painting is still a shitty painting even if it was done by someone famous.

The issue I have with what Jake and Dinos are doing is that Hitler presumably already intended it to be art.  By painting over it or adding their own elements they have stolen the intent from the artist.  It would be like if I grabbed Duchamp’s urinal and put it back in a restroom.  I rob the artist of it’s power and the artwork of it’s potency.

While I understand the reason why Jake and Dinos are doing it.  Why they are piggy-backing on the fame of Hitler, and make no illusion that they are not, it seems a shame that they have defaced works of historical significance to gain a little more limelight.