Duchamp's paradox
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10344255 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mariana Freitas Dos Santos (0000-0001-7315-8915, Uppsala University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-05-28 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Philosophical Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8094 • E-ISSN: 1467-9213 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/pq/pqaf045 |
| OpenAlex | W4410795804 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 23 |
I argue that, despite the vast philosophical and art-historical literature on Duchamp's Fountain, close attention to historical evidence reveals that at heart of the practice of art around the 1910s lay an overlooked paradox—an apparently valid argument, with apparently true but overlooked premises, to the then apparently absurd conclusion that Fountain is a work of art. In response to it, I identify solutions that can be inferred from leading theories of art. Then I show that such solutions rely on the widespread and never disputed assumption that there is, and has always been since the 1910s, a fact of the matter about whether Fountain is a work of art. If this assumption is false, I argue, a new kind of solution emerges and with it new possibilities about the extent to which a revolution can change the practice of art
Art · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Art History and Market Analysis · Art, Technology, and Culture · Philosophy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |