The Art Object

Conceptual
Transforming ordinary objects into art
o Makes them unusable
o Complicates viewer
Accessible
What you see is what you get
Intervention in definition of art
o Choosing = art
o Constructors, rather than makers
Projects onto environment
Transcends content

List of Works:
1. Brancusi, The Newborn,
a. Egg symbolized the potential for birth, growth, and development.
b. Perfect but organic ovoid that contained life in its essence.
c. Conflates its shape with the disembodied head of a human infant to
suggest the essence of humanity at the moment of birth.
d. Abstracts form into illegibility.
e. Transcends content.
f. Projects onto environment, inhabits same space, much more like us
than painting.
2. Duchamp, Fountain, 1917
a. Transformed ordinary, often manufactured objects into works of art
(readymades).
b. Argued that art objects might not only be crafted (in part) by others,
but that the objects of art could actually be manufactured for the
artist in the mass-produced world.
c. Simultaneously made a comment on consumption, modernity, and
the irrationality of the modern age by arguing that the "readymade"
work of art, as a manufactured object, simply bypasses the craft
tradition.
d. Significance in act of choosing.
3. Oppenheim, Object (Luncheon in Fur), 1936

a. Juxtaposes several disparate ordinary objects in strange new

contexts to create an uncanny surreality.
b. Transposes two objects from their ordinary reality, recontextualizes
them in an irrational new surreality, and transforms them into an
uncanny object that is simultaneously desirous and deeply
disturbing.
4. Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (No. 30), 1950
a. Unrestrained gestures transformed the idea of painting by moving
around and within the canvas, dripping and scoring commercialgrade enamel paint onto it using sticks and trowels.

Women in Art

Feminist art
o Questions the role and representation of women in society, the
media and the nature of the creation of art.

List of Works:
1. Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1974-79
a. Dedicated to hundreds of women and women artists rescued from
anonymity by early feminist artists and historians.
b. Equilateral triangle is symbol of both the feminine and the equalized
world sought by feminism.
c. Empty plates represent the fact that they had been swallowed up
and obscured by history instead of being recognized and honored.
d. Celebrates traditional women's crafts and argues for their place in
the pantheon of high art.
2. Sherman, Untitled Film Still #21, 1978
a. Exemplifies Postmodern strategies of looking.
b. Discussed in terms of second-wave feminism, as questioning
culturally constructed roles played by women in society, and as a
critique of the male gaze.
c. She assumes roles of both photographer and photographed,
subverting the way in which photographs of women communicate
stereotypes.