Week 2 Burger

I think Burger sums it up well when he says that Duchamp's ready-mades are not works of art but manifestations. The aestheticist Bourgeois notion of art does not allow for the idea of ready-mades because the art is neither planned nor made from his own hands, as I understand it. Slapping the signature on the thing signifies it as so, however. I can see why this stirred up so much hullabaloo in the art world. Art is no longer defined by its traditional terms. Now it's realized that art is all around us. I'm sitting at a table right now and I'm noticing that there are rounded edges and a textured top, and despite the fact that it's a table, and could even be used as a stand to hold a more traditional piece such as a sculpture, somebody somewhere designed the thing and it could be under bright lights with an accompanying placard in a museum somewhere and it would be fine.