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Posted on 3-12-2004 Urinal Defines Modern Vote by Charlotte Higgins, December 2, 2004, The Guardian
A humble porcelain urinal - reclining on its side, and marked with a false
signature - has been named the world's most influential piece of modern
art, knocking Picasso and Matisse from their traditional positions of
supremacy.
Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, created in 1917, has been interpreted in
innumerable different ways, including as a reference to the female sexual
parts.
However, what is clear is the direct link between Duchamp's "readymade",
as the artist called it, and the conceptual art that dominates today -
Tracey Emin's Bed being a prime example.
According to art expert Simon Wilson, "the Duchampian notion that art can
be made of anything has finally taken off. And not only about formal
qualities, but about the 'edginess' of using a urinal and thus challenging
bourgeois art."
The Duchamp came out top in a survey of 500 artists, curators, critics and
dealers commissioned by the sponsor of the Turner prize, Gordon's.
Different categories of respondents chose markedly different works, with
artists in particular plumping overwhelmingly for Fountain.
"It feels like there is a new generation out there saying, 'Cut the crap -
Duchamp opened up modern art'," said Mr Wilson.
He said that it was "something of a shock" that Pablo Picasso was not top,
particularly since, he argued, the artist's cubist constructions of 1912
to 1914 were Duchamp's "jumping-off point". However, Picasso has not been
totally erased: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Guernica were second and
fourth in the survey.
Mr Wilson said: "Les Demoiselles was the beginning of cubism, and cubism
was the most influential formal innovation in modern art. This is the
single work to which we can pin the origins of modern art."
Of Guernica - the artist's unflinching depiction of the horrors of the
Spanish civil war - Mr Wilson said: "Picasso re-established that art could
be modern and still deal with historical events, which had been junked by
impressionism."
Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych - with its resonances of celebrity, death
and tragedy - was named the third most influential work, and Henri
Matisse's The Red Studio, the fifth. Extraordinarily, however, not a
single artist put Matisse among their top choices.
"Today's artists expect art to contain some social or political comment,
even if that's very indirect," said Mr Wilson. "Matisse said that his art
was like an armchair into which one sinks at the end of the day - it's a
sort of pure sensuousness that artists today don't warm to."
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