"Art does not consist of the application of set standards of beauty, but rather of how instinct and the brain interpret these standards." (Pablo Picasso).
With the arrival of cubism, artistic freedom knew no more boundaries; the final piece no longer occurred as the result of the creative act filtering complex reality to reveal the essence of the subject, but rather the end product was the subject, a given precondition. That is to say, the finished piece was a purely plastic synthesis, as it was conceived before its execution. By introducing into the picture a "touch of reality", "a true object", the artists wanted to establish the direct confrontation between the object consistency of the painted object and the immediate reality of the actual object, in other words the painting should represent a reality as true as that of the object.

Duchamp's Message
In contemporary society, the line which separates goods from refuse is one thinly traced in sand; a line nearly invisible, defining sectors of consumption which indicate that the traditional retail market is not the actual end-station for consumer goods. This is the lesson to be learned from Duchamp, who in 1917 set up a pissoir in a New York gallery, calling it "Fountain".

Trento's Trash Art Show
In today's complex society, our rubbish no longer consists of useless waste. It is instead composed of items of some value, even if on a different scale. It would seem that man has finally managed to replicate to some degree nature's ability to transform death into new life. This ability has grown, perhaps, out of our fears of an environmental cataclysm and dwindling sources of energy which have forced us to think seriously about recycling and salvage schemes. A synthesis of this transformation was well-represented by an exhibition in Trento entitled "Trash. Quando i rifiuti diventano arte" (When Trash Becomes Art). It was aimed at presenting the effective use of scrap, waste and debris employed by various artists from the early '20s on; it also contemplated the "why" of this exploration.

Is Trash a Symbol?
Does trash have symbolic value? It could has been said that "trash represents risk and fascination, impending disaster and seduction, the beauty of the ugly and the memory of man. Now and then, it is the mark of a creativity as menacing as it is ambiguous-- garbage cannot be foreseen and therefore cannot be eluded." (Lea Vergine, curator of the Trash Art exhibition in Trento).
Recognizing the inherent worth of trash and assigning it a value through the use of art is therefore a significant phenomenon, even though a complex and somewhat convoluted one. The very paradoxes contained in the nature of garbage smudge the lines of demarcation between beauty and ugliness, good and bad, useful and useless. And as much, they bear disturbing witness to humanity's need to nurture its own legacy.

Exploring Trash Design