Ana Mendieta 'Art and Politics' and Marcel Duchamp 'The Richard Mutt Case'

In this speech, Mendieta discusses why she makes art, why she believes art is important, and criticizes the culture of the 1970s/80s.  First, she makes clear that she believes that art is kind of a job.  She can only make the art that she can make--no other kind.  She emphasizes she has no choice in the matter.  Mendieta believes it is important to know oneself, because only then can one begin to know the world.  Turning to culture, she believes art is crucial because it can greatly influence culture and society.  She questions current (1982) U.S. culture, believing that it is mostly controlled by advertising agencies and the wealthy, who create products for mass consumption and through these products, a fake world.  She complains of the effects of mass communication and how it is coming to influence the arts as well.  Many important artists are getting ignored in the wake of this all-encompassing cultural consumerism.

Ana Mendieta, work from Silueta series, 1970s

Duchamp's excerpt is his response to the Society of Independent Artists for refusing his submission of a urinal to their open exhibition in New York, 1917.  He questions why, when he paid the $6 to exhibit, his piece--"Fountain"--was not exhibited.  He then assumes that people considered it "vulgar" and/or that it was just a piece of plumbing, therefore not an artwork.  His response to the first is that a urinal is no more immoral than a bathtub.  As for the second objection, he believes the fact that he chose the piece to exhibit is what matters, not whether he made it with his own hands.  By taking an ordinary object and placing it in a different context, he "created a new thought for that object."  

R. Mutt (Marcel Duchamp), Fountain, 1917