NYC questions, "What is art" anyway?
Few artists have done more to make us question what, exactly, counts as art than Marcel Duchamp. In 1917, he submitted Fountain, a standard porcelain urinal turned upside down and signed with a pseudonym, to the Society of Independent Artists’ exhibition in New York. The controversy surrounding it became one of the defining provocations of modern art.
More than a century later, New York is having a very Duchampian moment. This is the final week to see Duchamp’s first U.S. retrospective in more than 50 years at MoMA, while Gagosian’s Duchamp exhibition, extended through August 28, has just two weeks left.
And the connections don’t stop there. Gagosian is also showing early works by Robert Rauschenberg that extend Duchamp’s radical rethinking of what art could be. Meanwhile, the 82nd Whitney Biennial closes this Sunday, offering one last chance to see artists who continue to challenge our assumptions about objects, materials, identity and even the definition of “American” art.
Consider it a crash course in questioning the obvious: Duchamp asks whether an ordinary object can become art; Rauschenberg asks what happens when art collides with everyday life; and artists at the Whitney ask how destruction, memory, identity and familiar objects can be transformed and reimagined.
Whether you believe an upside-down urinal belongs in a museum or an artistic rendering of a chimney left behind by the Eaton fires belongs on the Whitney terrace, go see these shows and decide for yourself. Just don’t be surprised if you leave with more questions than answers. Arguably, that’s very Duchamp.
Marcel Duchamp at MoMA and Gagosian
MoMA: 11 West 53rd Street, on view through August 22 (members last look 8/23)
Gagosian: 980 Madison Avenue
MoMA’s sweeping Marcel Duchamp retrospective brings together more than 300 works spanning the provocateur's norm-busting career. Highlights include Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), the fragmented, unconventional depiction of a nude that caused a sensation at the 1913 Armory Show; Boîte-en-valise, one of a series of miniature museums Duchamp assembled and produced in editions; and, of course, Fountain, the upside-down urinal.
Together, the works trace an artist who challenged conventional ideas about authorship, originality, beauty and even what could qualify as a work of art. Duchamp pushed viewers away from “retinal paintings” (comparing paintings to opiates of the masses) to art that celebrated the idea versus the product.
The exhibition also explores Duchamp’s alter ego, Rrose Sélavy, through which he played with gender, identity and sexuality. Even his ideas about the role of the audience challenged audiences: Duchamp argued that the spectator plays an essential role in completing a work’s meaning and determining its shock value.
“It all started with Duchamp. I couldn’t imagine a better artist or a more critical body of work to be the first exhibited in our new gallery at 980 Madison, a building he showed in just over sixty years ago,” said Larry Gagosian.
Earlier this year, Gagosian inaugurated its new 2,275-square-foot ground-floor gallery at 980 Madison Avenue with a Duchamp exhibit. The exhibition brings together key works, including his iconic readymades, returning them to the very building where Duchamp’s editioned readymades made their American debut in 1965.
The Gagosian exhibition was extended through August 28, giving visitors a few extra days to see the works in this particularly resonant setting.
Robert Rauschenberg at Gagosian
While you’re in the avant-garde mood, don’t miss Gagosian’s companion exhibition of six significant early works by Robert Rauschenberg, drawn from the Cy Twombly Foundation and also extended through August 28.
Rauschenberg and Twombly met at the Art Students League in 1951, later attended Black Mountain College together, and traveled through Europe and North Africa. Their friendship and creative exchange are central to the exhibition.
One of Rauschenberg’s visceral Black Paintings is included, featuring an experimental surface built from matte and glossy black paint, gravel, paper towels and collaged newspapers. The multi-panel work pushes back against Abstract Expressionism, transforming paint from a vehicle for emotional expression into something physical, tactile and materially present. In this sense, Rauschenberg extends a distinctly Duchampian challenge to the boundaries of art, blurring the line between painting and sculpture, art and everyday life, and traditional materials and found ones. The works also foreshadow his later embrace of technology, performance and unconventional media.
Akashi at the Whitney Museum
The Whitney: 99 Gansevoort Street
Closes Sunday, August 23
The 82nd Whitney Biennial asks not only what is being made in the United States, but what it means to call something “American” at all.
Be sure to see Kelly Akashi’s site-specific presentation across the Museum’s fifth-floor terrace and adjacent spaces. At its heart is Monument (Altadena), a haunting meditation on loss and survival after the 2025 Eaton Fire destroyed Akashi’s home and studio. Her chimney was the only structure left standing. She rebuilt it piece by piece with a mason, alongside a new walkway made of luminous glass brick.
There is another distinctly Duchampian thread in Sula Bermudez-Silverman's work. Like Duchamp, she takes familiar objects and makes us see them differently. But where Duchamp repositioned manufactured objects as art, Bermudez-Silverman physically transforms functional objects, incorporating delicate blown glass into antique tools including horse stirrups, traps and a bull nose puller. Objects designed for utility, control or restraint become fragile sculptural forms.
There is a satisfying thread connecting these exhibitions. Duchamp asks us to reconsider what makes an object art. Rauschenberg pushes art beyond traditional materials, categories and authorship. Akashi transforms the remnants of destruction into something that can be remembered and reimagined. Bermudez-Silverman takes familiar objects and disrupts their original function, asking us to see them anew.
Very different artists, very different answers, and perhaps the same lingering question: What, exactly, makes something art?
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Contributing Writer
Michelle Sinclair Colman
Michelle writes children's books and also writes articles about architecture, design and real estate. Those two passions came together in Michelle's first children's book, "Urban Babies Wear Black." Michelle has a Master's degree in Sociology from the University of Minnesota and a Master's degree in the Cities Program from the London School of Economics.
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