i've always considered that question to have been definitively answered/rendered moot/rendered mute in 1917 by r. mutt...
consequently i've always considered to be hopelessly uninformed responses to works of art along the lines of:
"my three year old can paint better than that"
"i could do that"
"that's stupid/pointless/meaningless/just a bunch of random images strung together by a pretentious hack in order to confuse us"
"that's not art, it's just a urinal/blank canvas/bunch of felt/an apple/pile of sand/square piece of plate steel/piece of rope/some broken glass in a box/a shark in fromaldahyde/a tent/a lawn chair/a bunch of canoes/etc/etc"
but then, while taking a photo of this bunch of canoes by nancy rubins, i noticed a long yellow hose running along the wall of the museum...
after looking around for a minute for clues i found this plaque that indicated that the museum had purchased the long yellow hose from a mexican hose salesman in 1996.
... i've never before felt an impulse to immediately dismiss a piece of art as worthless/not art. there's always been something there that i could at least get a critical/interpretive handle on... some real or imagined more or less vague intention towards meaning that i could at least sink my teeth into and then accept or reject on
those terms... at least engaging the work before saying that i don't like it/think it's poorly executed/downright idiotic...
but this absolutely refuses to be anything other than simply a hose... is
that the point? more duchamp than duchamp? urinal
as urinal and not readymade? if so, why is the hose not in use
as a hose?
does anyone else "get it"?