
How Brian Eno managed to urinate in Marcel Duchamp's “Fountain” - wslh
http://dangerousminds.net/comments/how_brian_eno_managed_to_piss_in_marcel_duchamp
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sp332
I though Duchamp was making fun of the art world. There is a large group who
are obsessed with curators and experts, and will praise anything that's put in
a gallery whether it's any good or not.

Edit: well it seems that was wrong, so let's derail the thread some more with
a strong recommendation to watch "F for Fake", and a long Twitter rant I found
about how to approach the "are video games art" conversation.
[https://twitter.com/ForgetAmnesia/status/882933955174989825](https://twitter.com/ForgetAmnesia/status/882933955174989825)

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maldusiecle
This Twitter thread is just really really bad. The argument it attributes to
Benjamin is just not what his essay says at all. In fact, Benjamin was a
pioneer in what we'd call "media studies," and he wrote about popular
entertainment long before the rest of academia took that sort of thing
seriously.

And if that were all that were wrong with it, it'd be a petty criticism, but
this attitude--of assuming every critic is an elitist snob--just pervades the
whole thing. Critics don't hate Thomas Kinkade (dude gets his name wrong,
also, twice) "because he mass produced his art"\--so did Warhol, so do most
modern artists on some level. They hate him because his work is kitschy and
boring. It's the elevator music of painting.

Contra the author, comics are taught in higher education. There was a whole
furor roughly a year ago because religious students at Duke were angry about
being assigned Fun Home. There are academics who specialize in science
fiction, who write about comic books. This entire long thread is against an
enemy that doesn't exist anymore.

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sp332
Asking for game(r)s to be taken seriously is specifically asking the elitists
to legitimize the medium. Non-elitist critics might take games seriously but
they don't count because culturally they aren't the gatekeepers to legitimacy.

I think the Kinkade point wasn't about mechanical mass production but mass
appeal. Critics might not like the work but he sold zillions of prints.
There's clearly a disconnect between what people think is good and what gets
praised as good.

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maldusiecle
That's the thing, though--who are these gatekeepers he's imagining? Game
studies are growing rapidly in academia. So-called "elite" media (which is,
let's face it, much cheaper to consume than the games themselves) don't
necessarily exclude games anymore. The New Yorker runs articles about games,
for instance.

But it's silly to act as if dislike of games never has anything to do with
quality. A lot of games, even now, have stilted dialogue, poorly-considered
plots, inept voice acting. They're bad _as games_, and this applies even to
many of the widely-praised ones. It's counterproductive to act as if lack of
coverage for games has nothing to do with this.

Many people like Thomas Kinkade. Many people like hundred-hour long video
games with badly-dubbed dialogue, repetitive battles, and lots of bugs. People
should be allowed to like what they like, but that road goes both ways.
Critics aren't obligated to pretend they enjoy things that actually make them
miserable, just because that's what people are buying.

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rootlocus
Reminds me of the cleaning lady who tossed an installation in the trash
because she mistook it for garbage. [1] Apparently, they were able to re-
create the installation before the trash was taken out, but I believe leaving
it would've sent a stronger message.

[1] [https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/8qkvab/a-janitor-
thr...](https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/8qkvab/a-janitor-threw-away-a-
boozy-art-exhibit-thinking-it-was-trash)

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coldtea
Dadaists and Surrealists would have argued that the cleaning lady did an an
even better aesthetic gesture than the original artist by throwing the
installation to the garbage...

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RUG3Y
The cleaning lady was actually just a performance artist.

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FLGMwt
Fantastic pun:

"Since “decommodification” was one of the buzzwords of the day, I described my
action as “re-commode-ification.”"

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munificent
Interestingly, "commodity" and "commode" are cognates. They both derive from
the Latin "commodus" which means "convenient" or "suitable". In different
ways, commodities and commodes are both things you need like-right-now-please.

~~~
FLGMwt
Even better! Thanks for the TIL :)

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lazylazy
There are four of them. Tate owns two; one for display and one in case of any
'accidents'

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sp332
Source?

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KON_Air
it is a _ _favourite belittling expletive goes here_ _ urinal there are
millions of it.

~~~
sp332
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)#Origin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_\(Duchamp\)#Origin)
"Other scholars such as William Camfield have never been able to match the
urinal shown in the photo to any urinals found in the catalogues of the time
period." "an artist's multiple was manufactured in an edition of eight in
1964."

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cr0sh
Things go in a strange direction in the comments section...

