Marcel Duchamp His Twine

This essay will focus on analysing two works of art, Marcel Duchamp’s ‘His Twine’ and Palle Neilsen’s ‘Model for a Qualitative Society’, and will compare them to one another. These prominent works of art both relate to some common themes of play, we will be focussing on Child’s Play. Also in this essay the aspects that will be discussed or briefly mentioned will include why these pieces were or are significant works of art, what they both represent, the possible meanings behind them, the effects of play on children, the division between the world of child’s play and that of the adult’s, and to what extent play and games are used within each piece and how they affect or disrupt their audiences habitual relation to their usual environments.

“One of the great gifts of life is to know how to play. When we are young, most of us know how to do this. As we get older, something of the joy dies and so-called reality sets our course to things more grim.
Martin Jay quoted him in his book, Downcast Eyes, admitting “For me the title was very important … I was interested in ideas—not merely in visual products.” Instead of merely painting objects on a flat canvas, Duchamp decided that he wanted to make three dimensional objects or scenes into living art. And so, Duchamp discarded the idea that art must be fundamentally attractive and began to think of the majority of things, of objects, as possible art pieces, he believed that it was the choice of the artist as to which objects could be considered part of their art. In other words, a regular object, with no aesthetic value to any other person, could potentially be an essential piece of an artists masterpiece if they so wished. This way of thinking was evident in Duchamp’s His Twine exhibition and how he had conducted it within a particular setting, engaging the environment and the people who were in