anti-art

An imprecise term sometimes referring to Dada, or to any movement which debunks traditional notions of art, or seeks to undermine its values.

Anti-art is the definition of a work which may be exhibited or delivered in a conventional context but makes fun of serious art or challenges the nature of art. The term is attributed to the French-American artist Marcel Duchamp, whose 1917 work Fountain – a urinal – was a prime example of the genre.

Since then various avante-garde art movements have a position on anti-art and the term is also used to describe other intentionally provocative art forms, such as nonsense verse.

The intention is to make the territory of art contested and difficult and is therefore a locus of class struggle in bourgeois culture. Mail art, for example operates outside the official art world and is sent from artist to artist.