ELI5: Why Is Duchamp's Urinal Considered Art?

Marcel Duchamp's urinal is considered art because it proved that an artwork is defined by the idea and the choice of the artist, not just how pretty or well-crafted an object is.

Imagine you are playing on a playground, and you find a very ordinary, smooth stick on the ground.

• To a dog, it is just a stick to chew on.


• To a tree, it is just a piece of wood that fell off.


• But if you pick it up, hold it high, and declare, "This is a magic wizard wand!", you completely change what that stick means to everyone in the game.

By putting a regular bathroom fixture into an art gallery, he wasn't saying, "Look at how well I carved this bowl." Instead, he was asking two big questions:

• "Does an artist have to make something from scratch, or can they simply choose it?"


• "Who gets to decide what is special and what is boring trash?"

Duchamp did the exact same thing with the urinal. He changed the context—moving an everyday object from a restroom to an art show—forcing people to think rather than just look. This created conceptual art, where the message in your mind is more important than the object in your hands.