statement
What is art is difficult to categorize. When art is defined as anything that is the result of human creativity, it insinuates that one’s perspective is crucial to its appreciation.
Marcel Duchamp in the early 20th century redefined modern art with his concept of the “Readymade.” This concept took ordinary objects and re-presented them as the artist’s own work of art. Duchamp recognized the human creativity inherent in the making of ordinary objects. Perhaps the best example is Duchamp’s Fountain. It was a urinal, which was laid horizontally instead of hung vertically. Duchamp in this series of pieces took a fundamental element of art, which is that each viewer gives the work its own meaning, and made people really question what can be defined as art. He helped others to recognize the inherent beauty in mundane objects. The result is that the ordinary of the everyday can be perceived as art if the viewer is in the right mindset.
The work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude also changed perceptions of the everyday. Jok Church describes Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s art as “entire environments, whether they are urban or rural. The artists temporarily disrupt one part of the environment. In doing so, we see and perceive the whole environment with new eyes and a new consciousness.” Their “Wrapped Reichstag” took a historic building in Berlin seen daily by the city’s residents and made people reconsider their surroundings. This rationale suggests that art as well as the environment is perceived differently by every person. However whether it is perceived as art is a separate matter from whether it is art.
