ABSTRACT
Readymade aesthetics depend upon the possibility of failure, the possibility that the creative act can and does fail. One of the core problematics that emerge out of modern historicizations of art is the reluctance and even refusal to experience those moments when an object is unable to hail or interpellate its subject. The question of posterity, which is central to Marcel Duchamp’s formulation of the creative act, demands a consideration of not only the possibility of an art object being understood and appreciated as meaningful in a future place and time. In his act of putting a urinal on display within an artistic context, Duchamp fails to recognize the object’s purposive existence as a lavatory feature for a men’s washroom that is meant to be urinated in.
