Artist Entry: Ethan Ham

The Small Glass (after Duchamp)

Ethan Ham produced this rather interesting 'accidental' take on Duchamp's "Small Glass".  The iPhone itself is a working iPhone that was accidentally dropped, creating the shatter along the bottom of the device. Having worked at Apple and seen many phones come in looking exactly like this, I find the direct correlation to Duchamp's work very interesting.

This idea of non-art artwork is taken even farther with the fact that the piece is still functional. Despite the sprawling crack along the screen, it is still a completely functional device. To take the connection to Duchamp even further, Ham replaced the wallpaper of the phone with Duchamp's "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even".

The result of this very deliberate connection to Duchamp is to subject this - and other similar pieces of technology - to many layers of questions regarding its validity as a piece of art, and its significance in our daily lives. It also, amusingly, strikes me as comparing the iPhone to R.Mutt's urinal as a culturally important contraption.