Editing Modernism (section)

==== Neo-Dada ====
{{Main|Neo-Dada}}

In 1917, [[Marcel Duchamp]] submitted a [[urinal]] as a sculpture for the inaugural exhibition of the [[Society of Independent Artists]], which was to be staged at the [[Grand Central Palace]] in New York.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573/text-summary| title='Fountain', Marcel Duchamp: Summary – – Tate| work=Tate| access-date=4 June 2015| archive-date=28 August 2015| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150828144308/http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573/text-summary| url-status=live}}</ref> He professed his intent that people look at the urinal as if it were a work of art because he said it was a work of art. This urinal, named ''[[Fountain (Duchamp)|Fountain]]'' was signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt". It is also an example of what Duchamp would later call "[[Readymades of Marcel Duchamp|readymades]]". This and Duchamp's other works are generally labelled as Dada. Duchamp can be seen as a precursor to conceptual art, other famous examples being [[John Cage]]'s ''[[4′33″]]'', which is four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence, and Rauschenberg's ''[[Erased de Kooning Drawing]]''. Many conceptual works take the position that art is the result of the viewer viewing an object or act as art, not of the intrinsic qualities of the work itself. In choosing "an ordinary article of life" and creating "a new thought for that object", Duchamp invited onlookers to view ''Fountain'' as a sculpture.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/blindman/2/05.htm| title=Blindman No. 2| access-date=4 June 2015| archive-date=1 June 2015| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150601102245/http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/blindman/2/05.htm| url-status=live}}</ref>

Marcel Duchamp famously gave up "art" in favor of [[chess]]. Avant-garde composer [[David Tudor]] created a piece, ''Reunion'' (1968), written jointly with Lowell Cross, that features a chess game in which each move triggers a lighting effect or projection. Duchamp and Cage played the game at the work's premier.<ref>{{Cite book |first1=Craig |last1=Owens |title=Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture |location=London and Berkeley [[University of California Press]] |date=1992 |pages=74–75}}</ref>

[[Steven Best]] and [[Douglas Kellner]] identify Rauschenberg and [[Jasper Johns]] as part of the transitional phase, influenced by Duchamp, between modernism and postmodernism. Both used images of ordinary objects, or the objects themselves, in their work, while retaining the abstraction and painterly gestures of high modernism.<ref>{{Cite book |first1=Steven |last1=Best |first2=Douglas |last2=Kellner |title=The Postmodern Turn |publisher=[[Guilford Press]] |date=1997 |page=174 |isbn=1-57230-221-6}}</ref>