Art object

An art object is a physical object that is considered to fulfill or have fulfilled an independent and primarily aesthetic function. An art object is often seen in the context of a larger work of art, oeuvre, genre, culture, or convention. Physical objects that document immaterial art works, but do not conform to artistic conventions have transubstantiated into art objects. The term is common within the museum industry.

Marcel Duchamp critiqued the idea that the objet d’art should be a unique product of an artist's labour, representational of their technical skill and/or artistic caprice. Theorists have argued that objects and people do not have a constant meaning, but their meanings are fashioned by humans in the context of their culture, as they have the ability to make things mean or signify something.Michael Craig-Martin said of his work An Oak Tree, "It's not a symbol. I have changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree. I didn't change its appearance. The actual oak tree is physically present, but in the form of a glass of water."Some writers have long made a distinction between the physical qualities of an art object and its status as artwork. For example, a Rembrandt seventeenth-century painting has a physical existence as a painting that is separate from its identity as a masterpiece. Many works of art, such as Duchamp's famous Fountain, have been initially denied "museum quality", and later
cloned as "museum quality replicas".There is debate as to why "art objects" made by artists are valued more highly in the West than craft objects made by craftsmen.