Thoughts Regarding Rush's introduction

Rush’s introduction gave me a very complete overview of how art has evolved throughout the centuries and how it will continue to evolve with the emergence of new technologies. One of the sections that fascinated me the most was "Time in Art". This is because he clearly explains that with the development of photography, artists were now able of manipulating not only space, but also time. This idea that artists could now plan the movement of subjects and objects in pictures was an enlightening creation.

Another topic that raised so much argument within myself was Duchamp whose ideals followed the belief that anything could be art. To him, “no material seemed out of place as a means of personal expression”. He became an icon because his artwork began to raise the question of what was art at the time. One of the reasons I disagree with him and his beliefs is because I feel such statement above allows every reader to believe they have the capacity and right to be called an artist. Such belief itself diminishes the importance and value of art. By saying anything could be art, even the simplest things in earth, he is basically implying anybody could do art. And this is just like saying anybody could be engineers or scientists, which sounds irrational. Nowadays when people walk down a gallery and look at very simplistic art they do not show appreciation towards it and feel they too could it. Examples of this type of art I refer to could be Malevich’s Black Square. Although I am quite sure the thought process and meaning behind this piece is extremely profound, nowadays people see this displayed feel it is too easy to do that. This also happens at times as when people look at pictures of clothes hanging or a simple toilet, etc and such photographs are called a work of art. At the core of this issue lies perception and what each individual sees as art, which is the reason why I feel defining art will never be a possibility. I just felt the need of expressing why I feel humans have, in a sense, damaged the image of art with their own perceptions of what art is.

The first two suprematist compositions below by Malevich came a couple of decades after Duchamp. These are all examples of art that could indeed make people believe creating art is almost too easy.