antiart

Antiart is a term used to describe art that seeks to challenge, undermine, or redefine the conventional boundaries of art, taste, and the institutions that support it. It arose in early 20th-century avant-garde movements, most notably Dada, which rejected bourgeois culture and conventional aesthetic standards through paradox, collage, and performance. Marcel Duchamp's readymades, such as Fountain (1917), are often cited as emblematic of anti-art because they placed an ordinary object into an artistic context, prompting questions about authorship, value, and what counts as art.

In the following decades, anti-art ideas recurred in various forms. Surrealists used provocative or irrational imagery to oppose rationalist art norms; Fluxus and related events from the 1960s deliberately blurred boundaries between art and life, favoring performances, instructions, and audience participation over finished objects. Conceptual art further extended anti-art aims by arguing that an idea or concept can be the artwork, sometimes at the expense of material production. The term remains a descriptor rather than a formal movement, and it is applied to works that critique commodification, institutional authority, or the fetish of originality.

Reception and influence: anti-art has influenced institutional critique, postmodern practice, and discussions about the nature and value of art. It is often viewed as a historical category that helps explain how art has contested and redefined its own boundaries.