Marcel Duchamp Research Paper

The art movement Dadaism emerged after the outbreak of World War I as a protest against the war, conformity, and bourgeois capitalist society. The aim of the movement was to create something chaotic, something anti-war, anti-logic, and anti-art. Widely believed to have originated in Zurich, Switzerland, the movement spread throughout Europe and then to New York where it reached the height of its renown because of artists like Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, and Man Ray. Duchamp led the American Dada movement and is considered responsible for changing the course of art history because of his contributions to the beginnings of conceptual art. He became famous for his “readymade” art, a term used by him to represent everyday objects he assembled

Using a cynical approach to portray this concept, Duchamp undermines and challenges how the world values and understands what art is. Today, a Duchamp assembled snow shovel may be auctioned off for possibly millions of dollars while a physically identical snow shovel may be bought from a hardware store for a fraction of the cost. The only differences between the snow shovels are Duchamp’s name being attached to one and its display as a work of art in a museum. Duchamp pushed the notion that the value of art is not connected to the handicraft of the work or the proficiency and skill of using the paintbrush, but that art is about ideas and those ideas themselves have an ability to transform the way one perceives the world. He rejects that art is for “retinal pleasure” in favor that it is purely conceptual. Duchamp desired for art to be perceived like poetry. He wanted to push people to think beyond the visual characteristics of the object to where the piece brings them emotionally and intellectually and in how it changes the way one thinks. By distancing art from handicraft and making it conceptual, Duchamp challenges earlier art and breaks ground for the emergence of contemporary