In their simplest form, art objects like Duchamp’s “Fountain” transform banality into otherness somewhere in the communication of themselves, when repositioned in context. Although “Fountain” spoke mainly just of its own transformancefrom the banal to the attention worthy, such an act, in itself, can also produce tangents and posibilities of meaning.Objects created by grouping or altering ordinary items, relocating them into other contexts, or those created to appear banal can be powerful agents of thought or imagination, given their pre-existant structure of meaning. This is an instant key in for the viewer.
The semiotic system of meanings inherent to all objects can be manipulated in lots of ways, and is one of the most important tools used when recreating, representing, presenting any image or object for consideration as something other than itself, in this case, art. Whether a painting of a bowl of over ripe fruit iscrafted to put you in mind of the brevity of existance or everyday objects (such as lobsters and telephones) juxtaposed to evoke a particular absurdity of the human psyche, transformation is integral to the processes of art.
Does banality happen after this fact, or because of it? Can banal exist within an object before its meaning is attached to it; after the meaning is asociated but before it has been deciphered and its status assigned; or even after this, once ithas been tranformed through such a process as art?
The power of the tranformed banal object lies within its familiarity. Initially as a means to make the tranformation easy to engage in. Secondly because the
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