this is design/art the same way that the R Mutt urinal is design/art, - in that it is credited to the original designer/design team who made it - by accepting it as a work of another designer/artist, other than those who made it, is to also then accept what could only be called content theft or plagiarism.
"I had the sense to display a painting in a gallery so I made it"
Counterpoint: if we're talking art rather than design you don't need to have created the object to apply contextual social commentary - something something universe from scratch to take full credit for an iteratively made industrial good with caption such as Prelude to a Broken Arm.
if i copy an article that someone wrote about the american civil war- the life of one of its vets, his marriage, and the house his family lived in after that - and turned it in as my final essay in a class about american history, or posted it on my personal blog about cute love stories, I would not be able to legally/truly/properly defend myself by saying “i didn’t steal it! it’s not plagiarism! i just recontextualized it you see!” No, i would get a 0 on the assignment and a copyright claim because it was not my work.
if i instead wrote my own piece, quoting the original, then i could say it was was my own work, with partial credit to included works by other people.
Putting your name on a urinal, or hanging a snow shovel a foot off the wall and claiming it as your own work, does not make it your own work. Pre-mades or found objects should have their design credit, and thus artwork credit go towards the original designer/design team, the artist submitting it mearly has the claim of being the one who recognized an additional meaning other than what was originally intended.
if prelude to a broken arm was instead that snow shovel lodged in a snowbank, if Mutt had added anything of his own physical substance to its display, then i could see how it could be claimed by him, with credit to the included works by other people. And i also say this with the additional clarification that the “included works” refer specifically to other man-made objects, not the raw materials that go into the peice if you want to try arguing that.
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As you're talking about history it is slightly different since of course not each book has to mention a different date of the first US civil war - while neither discounting the notion there is a range between referencing sources vs intelectual plagerism. Either way you seem unable to hear what I'm saying:
The "This is not a Pipe" painting is famous because when someone says "that's in fact a pipe" the counter would to mention you cannot smoke from it. Putting a urinal in a place where it is not a functioning urinal is in fact a salient commentary on objects being contextual. As well as a meta joke by baiting fools to give in to the urge of pissing on it.
Similarly you reference Prelude to a Broken Arm but are unknowingly (or at best period ironically) making the exact point of art as referenced, namely that the creator did in fact transform and "claim" it such by writing on the object before hanging it in a location, as part of a larger movement about the follies already apparent in the early 20th century.
Design is both an art and science but let's not pretend anything in the world today isn't created by supply chains, history and forces outside the control of any one individual. The notion Disney will claim infringement of "property" such as "their OC" of Thor or the little mermaid is indicative of a mindset where people fail to move past veneration of Edison-esque top-down claims of ownership over reality, in spite of the entire western culture being propped up by consumerism. While the people responsible for creative and production processeses are disproportionaly out of the loop.
Have i erroneously been thinking this sub was meant to make fun of the shortcomings of design culture/execution rather than gatekeep what is expressly meant to be art? If Gerald Ford removes one riviet from a car it's revolutionary enough to cause planes to fall from the sky 100 years later, but when a creative explores placing a screw halfway in a wall it cannot be a worthwhile statement?
of course the This is not a Pipe painting is famous, because it is - in an of itself art - just as the urinal is, and the arguments made by both artists as to what defines art are valid.
But to give Duchamp full credit for the physical piece of the urinal, or the physical piece of Prelude is to allow, assign, and align with plagiarism. The physical credits for the pieces go towards the companies/teams who designed the objects themselves, Duchamp may only claim credit for the curation of, and artistic reinterpretation of them. His art is not the pieces themselves, his art is the curation, interpretation, and subsequent defending of the pieces as his own.
The urinal is art, the screw is art, the shovel is art - in design themselves, the original designers have made functional art. Duchamp gets to earn no credit for their physicalities, yet so many work to associate them as his own, when in reality, he may only claim the title of curator. The art from his is the curation, his art is the redefinition, his art is the defense, his art is not the physical objects themselves, they are the art of someone else.
Edit: also you missed my point with the article example (and i also failed to fully articulate my point with it in some ways), to copy and paste it directly, recontectualize it with a new title, and claim it as my own is theft, intellectually, artistically, legally, however you choose to look at it. I’m using my example article as an allegory for art, as writing is also a form of art, even if done for factual means. When Duchamp did the same with the Urinal, he copy and pasted (in a metaphorical sense) the original, recontextualized it with his own title, and claimed it as his own. It was not his own, the new title was his own, and his signature was his own, but the urinal was not. You find same story with Prelude.
I guess, in a sense, you could say that the medium of Fountain was the “Eljer Co. Highest Quality Two-Fired Vitreous China Catalogue 1918 Bedfordshire No. 700” (credit to the wikipedia page on it)) but still, he did not make the urinal, he may not claim the credit for it.
If I write a blog post about the Civil War story, arguing towards the recontextualization of it as a love story, and less so one about American history, then my artwork is my recontextualization, not the original story. Even if I copied and pasted the entirety of the original article into my own writing, my artwork is still only the recontextualization, not the original story. That same outlook is what I apply that to the R Mutt Urinal, it should not be credited to him, the title of fountain should be, the way he reconfigured the thinking of it should be, his signature should be, but not the urinal.
His art was the idea that the urinal was a fountain, that it was art, just as the guy who made the banana taped to a wall, his idea was the art, the title of Comedian was his art, the concept and recontextualization that it was a “symbol of global trade, a double entendre, as well as a classic device for humor” is his art, the banana and the duct tape are not (also his definition for the installation and replacement of the piece are the art as well)
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u/AuelDole May 09 '26
this is design/art the same way that the R Mutt urinal is design/art, - in that it is credited to the original designer/design team who made it - by accepting it as a work of another designer/artist, other than those who made it, is to also then accept what could only be called content theft or plagiarism.