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The fourth big chock "Ready made" is perhaps the most controversial artistic concept of the history of art. It is art desecration with inerasable consequences for the future artists and art world itself. Its impact in human self esteem, was devastating. As science and philosophy where discovering, we where not gods. This painful process questions human part in the universe. Philosophically, this meant a radical mental change, that leads us to the idea that we are irrelevant in cosmos. Ready- made was then, the fourth big chock of human humiliation.
First one brought it Copernicus, with the destruction of the fundamental dogma that put Earth in the center of the universe; second, was this amazing idea that Freud found, the unconscious, that withdrawn the power over our self's; third, the finding by Darwin that men and ape had a common ancestor, now we where not anymore the sons of God; and finally, the fourth big chock with Marcel Duchamp and the desecration of art, and with Beyus, to art's democratization making possible to the common mortal to became a artist.
Ironically, as often happens, Duchamp is betrayed by is own objects (ready-made). They're choice where made not for aesthetic or plastic reasons. A non retinal principle, Duchamp declared. Taste was out of the game. By at the same time as society and art system accepted these artistic objects, and they started to appear in art galleries and museums, subverting somehow what Duchamp wanted, they acquire the work of art status, progressively becoming visual and retinal works of art. They're literary sense is ignored. Marcel Duchamp looses control of his work destiny. The ready-mades acquire life of they're own and, like a son who becomes a adult, emancipate. Like Duchamp said then, "It's very powerful, this cursed Herrisson (1), (...) restless. It became too beautiful.
(1) "Bottle-drainer" Rib 2004