A question
In 1917, Marcel Duchamp signed his name on a urinal and defined it as an artwork. Since then, many artists have kept working to answer the question of “What is art?” and brought different objects into the field of art. Dead animals and broken pianos are now recognized as significant works in the history of art.
However, such expedition of artists stray into risky area.
As a result of the attempts of artists to put different things into the field of art, art begun to challenge moral matters. I understand that by making scandals, the successful stories made art society exciting. Nevertheless, the work of Damian Hirst is viewed as an animal cruelty by many people who disagree with him. This cause the following question: If animal cruelty is accepted as art by specialists, what about violence? The ultimate question of this direction is “Is murder art?”.
The movement of contemporary art to answer the question given by the work of Marcel Duchamp has arrived at a limit.
Violence might be not intention of artists. However, I believe there are artists who make their works in intentionally immoral ways.Art is not to hurt someone else. Art shouldn’t be used for the excuse to do whatever a person wants. Art is not a sect. In my view, we are at the moment to discover other directions for contemporary art.
Art specialists need to quit answering “What is art?”. What need to ask now is “What is contemporary art?”.
To conclude, some artists create a revolution in art by bringing varied objects into the category of art and became famous through this. However, this brought art into a dangerous area that can exceed moral limits.
As art is standing on the point towards the other direction that contains elements which used to be considered as unlikely to be contemporary art.
22 March 2011
modified on 27th Nov 2011
Hitomi Kammai