L. H. O. Q Vs Duchamp

“The choice of the readymades is always based on visual indifference and, at the same time, on the total absence of good or bad taste.”

I have chosen the title for my exhibition to be: “Question?” I chose this as throughout the essay I draw lots on the idea of art being a question rather than an object in terms of the readymades.

Duchamp was taking prefabricated objects, isolating them from their surroundings and elevating them to the status of art. So in order to elevate the objects to the status of art they need to be in the stereotypical surroundings of art so for this exhibition I would hold it in a publicly funded gallery.

Dada claimed not to be a style as they were against the initialisation cannon of the formal bourgeoisie art. They

“L.H.O.O.Q” is a usual Duchamp pun working on many levels of humour, continuing this Dadaist idea of ‘taking the mick’ of the formal bourgeoisie arts. Its course title alone preannounced letter by letter in French means ‘she’s got a hot ass’ is instantly bringing this humours point across but the fact that Duchamp is giving male attributes to the most famous and highly fetishized female portrait ever painted is also subtle joke on Leonardo’s own homosexuality, something that would not have been a subject discussed at the

In “Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp” he describes taste as a habit. He says that it is “the reparation of something already accepted” so in terms of the urinal it is an object that was seen daily and had been ‘accepted’. So although Duchamp claimed the readymades were selected with the intensions of avoiding taste he confessed that with the passage of time, it was inevitable that their familiar appearance would result in causing them to acquire certain aesthetics qualities – “I will keep something around for a long time then to my horror, it starts looking