Marcel Duchamp

When modern art first started to raise in the late 1800’s, two artists defined the form for what it was. Modern art is a movement that challenges the traditional ideas art, it’s to step outside any confining notions of what art is and while many artists now practice the modern art style it’s the beginning that made the movement as powerful and as enticing as it is today.

Marcel Duchamp was a rebel of sorts at the time, his defying approach and questioning of what art truly was embodies what modern art has evolved to.
Duchamp, raised in Normandy, spent his youth painting, reading and playing music. His upbringing was centered around the arts it would seem and Duchamp produced his first artwork Landscape at Blainville at the early age of 15 and that artwork was a reflection of Duchamp’s love for Claude Monet.
He had followed

After his capture and release by the British forces, Beuys returned to his parents home in the near-decimated Kleve.

In 1946 he enrolled at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie, where he studied under the sculptor Ewald Mataré, among others. It was also here that Beuy was exposed to the philosophical writings of Rudolf Steiner, the early-twentieth-century founder of Anthroposophy, a movement that emphasized freedom, spirituality, and creativity as the basis for individual growth and social well-being.

The youth of both Duchamp and Beuys was radically different but they both questioned what art was and what it should be though differing in the views behind it.
Furthermore, the similarities have differences themselves.
Beuys often suggested that “art” might not ultimately constitute a profession but, rather, a more humanitarian way of conducting one’s life.

His attitude to art is one of the most philosophical views an artist could have as well as one of most politically impacted that reflected into his