In the years leading up to the First World War, a Frenchman named Marcel Duchamp found a toilet, painted “R. MUTT 1917” upon it, and called it art, and in doing so, he ignited a new movement, the Dada movement, which would bring about the philosophy and style referred to as “anti-art.” Followers of this new genre praised Duchamp’s new “found-object” style and tried to push the boundaries of what constituted art, claiming that the term had no real definition and could therefore be anything to which we assigned artistic value or meaning. But while the many faces of art may make it appear that art eludes definition, anti-art and the ideas upon which it is founded have led to a degradation and falsification of art and are therefore severely overrated. 

Although the subjectivity of art does allow for personal interpretation (within rational limits), the accepted definition of the word lays down clear constraints that contradict the anti-art stance on the matter, which has served as the foundation for the cheapening of art. A look into any dictionary, specifically the Google dictionary, will give you a variation of the following definition of art: a visual expression of human creativity made to be appreciated mainly for its aesthetic or emotional value. While anti-art claims that found objects can be considered art, the literal meaning of the term implies that human creativity must be responsible for the object. While Duchamp’s toilet, titled Fountain, may indeed be a work of creativity, it is certainly not Duchamp’s creativity that brought the toilet into existence. Creativity does not mean possessing a unique perspective (i.e. that a found object can be art), so Duchamp’s role in the “transformation” of found objects into “art” is as limited as being an interpreter. Duchamp claimed that Fountain was a commentary upon poverty and wealth disparities as well as a statement meant to challenge the cultural emphasis on originality in art. An artist’s job is not to create meaning for open-ended art — and, by open-ended, I refer to art that does not have self-evident meaning, such as a painting of a Biblical scene. Interpretation is the viewer’s job. The artist’s job, rather, is to create the piece either with self-evident meaning or with an open invitation to personal meaning. The “artist,” therefore, who presents a found object as his art is not really an artist at all. His involvement in that piece amounts to that of a viewer. 

The dictionary definition of art further states that art is meant to be appreciated for its beauty or emotional power. Found-object “art,” such as Duchamp’s Fountain, is not intended to arouse emotion or appeal to the human attraction to aesthetics but rather is intended to make people think. Following Duchamp’s and the anti-artists’ reasoning, Fountain is art because it has been given artistic meaning. But that meaning is purely intellectual. Found objects are “commentary” or “statements” but they are not art, for their appeal is intellectual or mental, not emotional or aesthetic. This is not to say that art cannot be thought-provoking, only that it is not a necessary qualification. Moreover, this anti-art belief that found objects equate to art is not only false but degrades art as a whole. It leads to laziness by assuring artists that they don’t have to push themselves through the ardor and commitment that artists’ have had to overcome for tens of thousands of years and may instead get by by applying ostensibly-deep meanings to trivial things, encouraging praise of minimalism — a term that some may think describes art with minimal details but which I consider, in the context of its use within anti-art, to describe art made with minimal effort. Overall, the dictionary definition of art contradicts the anti-artists’ claim about the amorphous nature of art and highlights how the anti-art movement is contributing to a decline in the quality of art.

Anti-art beliefs about the boundaries of art are further contradicted by various philosophical axioms, revealing the anti-artists’ unfamiliarity with any thorough research on the debate and how their claims have ingrained within society a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of art. One philosophical axiom about art is that an artwork must be an entity (artifact or performance) intentionally given significant aesthetic value. This disproves the anti-art claim that found objects count as art, as found objects are created without artistic intention. Duchamp’s Fountain was made by a machine and designed by an engineer with the intention of making it function within someone’s bathroom, not of displaying it in an art exhibition in Paris. Humans have the ability to assign beauty to artifacts (“artifact” being the preferred philosophical term for a man-made object) beyond the level of objective or natural beauty that that artifact possesses. However, this assignment of beauty does not have transformative value; it cannot convert an artifact into art. Art requires a level of aesthetic value endowed purposefully by its maker. 

Plato and Kant have also contributed to the philosophy of art, asserting that art is representational and imitative and is therefore inferior to the object it represents. Plato argued for a hierarchy of forms, in which “inferiority,” when describing an artifact, refers to its possession of a lesser kind of reality. Therefore, found-object anti-art cannot be art, as, rather than being representational and inferior to its model, it is equal to its model, for it is its model. Duchamp’s toilet does not represent a toilet; it is a toilet, and thus it is not art. The fallacy of believing anti-art to be art has served and continues to serve as the basis for a proliferation of false art pieces. Much of the contemporary art in some more radical museums is not actually art at all — a sad result of the anti-art cult that has taken root.

It would be understandable to argue that the fact that found-object anti-art is not real art does not mean that the anti-art movement as a whole is overrated or contradicted. While this is not an axiom of expert thought, I find it self-evident that art is not merely a representational visual piece created by a human with aesthetic intention. If we adhere to a definition like that, we allow such works as three colored stripes on a canvas to be considered art, even though it lacks both originality and effort. Art, then, requires effort. It requires that the artist give it something of himself. It requires that the artist be vulnerable, or that he sacrifice time, or that he commit himself to something that he knows will be challenging and, at times, tiring. This does not mean that something must be “good” to be art. But it means that simple patterns on a canvas, a single sphere over a square, etc. are not art. 

And collages, popular in anti-art circles, are not art either. If you look at traditional forms of art, such as painting and sculpting, it becomes clear that art is an interaction between an artist and something “formless” that is then transformed into an artistic “form.” You begin with something that is not art, like a blank canvas or a mass of clay, and turn it into art, like a painting or a sculpture. Or, in some cases, you take something that is art, like a painting, and you change it so much that it becomes a new artwork. However, in collages, you are assembling already-complete artworks (photographs) and juxtaposing them in different ways. This has aesthetic value, but it is not the formation of a new artistic artifact. If you assemble a group of sculptures, you don’t have a brand new artwork, you have a display of sculptures. The same goes for a collage. Collection does not equate to creation. However, if you take a hundred portraits and organize them so that they form a new image, you could argue that that is art. This cultural misunderstanding of what exactly art is has led to significant devaluing of art in terms of quality. Meanwhile, it has also served as a way for the rich to get richer. A banana taped with a single strip of duct-tape to a wall sold for $120,000. An artist recently gave a museum two blank canvases after being commissioned and given tens of thousands of dollars. The title of the piece was “Take the Money and Run.” Art is becoming a platform for fraud. For scams. Something does not have inherent meaning just because someone claims it does. And no anti-art piece is worth a year’s salary. 

Art is subjective. It is personal. It has freedom and many faces. And yet it cannot, as anti-artists would like to believe, be “anything.” The “rules” in art are meant to protect it from devolution into robotic simplicity and from the growth of falsehoods about what it is. Anti-art, in trying to challenge these rules for the sake of being different and individualistic, has stripped art of its identity and reduced the field to a money-making hub with a cult that values invisible meaning and curiosity over genuine quality. Anti-art, overall, is overrated.