At first I thought this tradpost was pro pissing on feet instead of in urinals
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
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Gonna be honest: Gatekeeping what should be defined as art ist kinda stupid. Art even includes discussion about what art is. Art is just a visual (or audiotory) effigy of big parts of philosophy. If a piece inspires you to have deep philosophical discussion about what art is, it is art simply by forcing you to think.
The urinal is not art. The reaction to the urinal is art on a mastercraft level. No one has quite reached the same level of artistry since. You can duct tape a banana to a wall, but it just doesn't create the same outrage as the urinal did.
So what you mean to say is: "Trolling is a art."
Did we read the same series of posts? I thought they made it very clear that the urinal is art and explained how the reaction was desired and how the artist tried to create that reaction?
art can have function and vice versa. A door handle is art. A lightswitch is art. They were designed and manufactured. Do(e) A Deer from the Sound of Music is just the most basic scale in music theory pretty much in chromatic order. It's still a song. Same for the Alphabet song, it's lyrics are just the alphabet, it's still art.
Toilets are also art. If you really wanted a toilet that had no artistry at all it'd be an uneven hole in the floor made with a hammer.
I think that would then be performance art.
How about piss christ?
remember kids, it doesn't need to be difficult to make to be art, it just needs to make you think of it as art
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Fountain is unfathomably based. I've used this history lesson to reassure my cousin who started painting for his PTSD and got told by a bunch of shitheads that he wasn't a "Real Artist" when he sold some art.
This stuff is a litmus test for when you're in a culture war with people trying to hide the fact they're warring with you on every front they can
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They say “traditional art”, but they mean “shut up and paint, with no subversive messages hidden”.
But the thing is, the time period they consider “traditional art” is chock full of artists being told to “shut up and paint”, and not appreciating that very much and deciding to sneak subversive messages into their works, knowing that their patrons would be too dumb to catch on.
In effect, they’re saying “can we go back to a time when I didn’t understand that you thought I was dumb?”
Shall we talk about Caravaggio? Most notably Basket of fruit?
He was an atheist sneaking anti-church messages in his church-bought paintings. Iirc he got found out a couple of times and people weren’t super happy if being played for fools.
I had to look it up; what a beautiful painting!
From the outset it looks quite normal and enticing but on further examination:
Sorry for the wall of text but I found this fascinating, also serves a great alt text (which I don't know how to add with my client) or for a screen reader
... a good-sized, light-red peach attached to a stem with wormholes in the leaf resembling damage by oriental fruit moth (Orthosia hibisci). Beneath it is a single bicolored apple, shown from a stem perspective with two insect entry holes, probably codling moth, one of which shows secondary rot at the edge; one blushed yellow pear with insect predations resembling damage by leaf roller (Archips argyospita); four figs, two white and two purple—the purple ones dead ripe and splitting along the sides, plus a large fig leaf with a prominent fungal scorch lesion resembling anthracnose (Glomerella cingulata); and a single unblemished quince with a leafy spur showing fungal spots. There are four clusters of grapes, black, red, golden, and white; the red cluster on the right shows several mummied fruit, while the two clusters on the left each show an overripe berry. There are two grape leaves, one severely desiccated and shriveled while the other contains spots and evidence of an egg mass. In the right part of the basket are two green figs and a ripe black one is nestled in the rear on the left. On the sides of the basket are two disembodied shoots: to the right is a grape shoot with two leaves, both showing severe insect predations resembling grasshopper feeding; to the left is a floating spur of quince or pear.
For the symbology (of which I remember only parts)
The apple is a symbol of Christ, so have a worm hole undercuts Christ himself.
The wine grapes are symbol of the resurrection, but they are sick.
The figs… maybe you can guess? Another Christian symbol, looking sickly and overshadowed.
The basket itself is a symbol of the plenty that God bestowed mankind, and is overhanging the side of the table, ready to fall.
This painting metaphorically says “there is no god, and definitely no Christian God”
Thanks for posting the picture, I still haven’t figured out how to do it!
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