Dada

Marcel Duchamp's "The Fountain"(1917) opens the flood gate to the question "what is art" The interesting predicament of this question is "what is art" in comparison to what? "The Fountain" was a way of forcing people to answer that question. His intention was to break the convention of what art should or could be. Even to this day art is and aways will be ever changing, there will always be new artist's that push the limits of what we find to be "art."But we shouldn't try to find the one answer to the question, we should take each piece for itself and look at it in its own context and time. The intention of the artist should become as important as the style he/she expresses it in. Duchamp's intent of bring an object of low esteem to a high pedestal in itself a statement of the appreciation of function as much as its form. It is a beautiful in its function to dispose of human waste as efficiently and cleanly as possible, as much of its beauty in shape and line.