The canon of Western art history provides a selection of artists that have supposedly made an 'original' contribution to stylistic innovation within the visual arts. Although a process of selection cannot be avoided, this procedure has resulted in a Eurocentric and patriarchal art canon. For example, the Western art canon consists of certain white male artists who are given exclusive authority and are often referred to as the 'fathers of art'. As the status of a 'father of art' pertains to the highest level of achievement within artistic creativity, I argue that this excellence in creativity is based on a gender specific criteria. This issue refers to the patrilineage within Western art history and how this father-son model, in a general sense, excludes women artists from the canon. Further, the very few women included in the art canon are not given the equivalent status as a 'father of art'. I address this patriarchal bias through focussing on the father/daughter relationship as a way of challenging the patrilineage within Western art history’s patrilineage. Through this process of intervention, I position the daughter an assertive figure who directly confronts the fathers of Western art. Within this confrontation, I emphasise that the daughter has an assertive identity that is also beyond the father. On this premise my paper is based on the argument that the application of a father/daughter model, within a metaphorical and mythological sense, is useful in subverting the father figures within Western art history. That is, I construct myself as the metaphorical and mythological daughter of the Dada artist, Marcel Duchamp and the Fluxus artist, Joseph Beuys. As an assertive daughter, I insert myself into the patriarchal framework surrounding these two canonical figures in order to decentre and subvert their authority and phallocentric art practice. It is important to note that both Duchamp and Beuys are addressed as case studies (not as individual arguments) that illustrate the patriarchal constructs of the art canon. Within this premise, I draw upon the female artists Sherrie Levine and Jana Sterbak who directly subvert Western father figures as examples of assertive daughter identities. Within this exploration of the assertive daughter identity, I discuss feminist psychoanalysis (particularly the 'object relations' theorist Nancy Chodorow and the French feminist, Luce Irigaray) in order to offer metaphorical representations of the assertive daughter. These metaphors also assist in subverting the gender (male) specific criteria for creativity under the 'law of the father'.

This study investigates the extent to which subversive practices of conceptual art can be identified in contemporary works. It attempts to understand if, despite the widespread understanding of conceptual art as a mainstream in today's art scene, there may still be examples of contemporary practice that are as deviant and challenging to the notion of art today as those that came at the forefront of the conceptual art movement.       The standard historical definition of 'conceptual art' generally refers to the artistic movement taking place between 1966 and 1972. The aim of this study, however, is to give an account of its development both prior to and beyond that narrow temporal window, seeking to identify both the roots and the legacy of the philosophical aspects of conceptual practice.       The study traces these roots to the actions of Duchamp, who shifted the focus from aesthetics to a more cognitive valuation of art, by designating an everyday object as an artwork; an action that paved the way for the notion that, rather than being skilled craftsmen, artists are the authors of meaning, and artworks are the creation and transmission of ideas.       This ‘Duchampian’ approach which pushes and explores the boundaries of art within the framework of the artwork themselves has also influenced the selection of works for analysis. Like most other contemporary artworks, Michael Mandiberg's After Sherrie Levine and Banksy’s The Walled off Hotel, are considered conceptual in the sense that they work to transmit ideas to the viewer, but yet, like Duchamp’s ready-mades a hundred years earlier, they sit beyond commonly accepted understandings of the formal boundaries of the artwork, thus risking not being perceived as artworks at all. For that reason, these works potentially constitute radical practices that could be understood as questioning the limits of art making today.       From a theoretical point of view the study engages in hermeneutics and constructivism in order to construct an analysis of these two artworks relating their websites as well as artists’ intentions to the philosophical notions of conceptual art. The results show that the After Sherrie Levine is a critique of Levine's aura as well as of the art institutions. It also proposes that artistic appropriation as an art form can have an instrumental value in exploring the limits of art making. It further shows that it is possible to create art that is neither exclusive nor mysterious. The analysis of The Walled off Hotel shows that while operating as a local company with an ambition to lead the creative resistance movement in the West Bank through art, the hotel also constitutes a political satire with real effects in the area. The thesis proposes that this work is deviant and ‘organic’ in the way it renegotiates both the role of the artist and the very notion of 'art' itself.        Thus both After Sherrie Levine and The Walled off Hotel can be regarded as rather ‘Duchampian’ practices today.