Fountain
Duchamp bought a urinal, turned it on its side, signed it “R. Mutt 1917” and submitted it to an exhibition. The original was lost; what exists today are replicas.
The object itself is not the point. The question is: who decides what counts as art?
In April 1917 Marcel Duchamp submitted an ordinary urinal to the first exhibition organised by the Society of Independent Artists in New York. The society had promised to show every work by members who paid the fee. Duchamp sat on the board himself but submitted the object under a pseudonym. The urinal was signed “R. Mutt 1917” and bore the title Fountain.
The object is a factory-made urinal in white porcelain. Duchamp turned it ninety degrees so that it lay on its back instead of hanging on a wall. The signature is painted in black on the rim of the porcelain. Otherwise the object is unaltered. That is precisely the point: the artist did not shape or paint it, he only chose it.
Duchamp called such works readymades: ready-made objects that become art because the artist selects them and places them in a new context. He had already made readymades before, such as a bicycle wheel mounted on a stool and a bottle rack. With Fountain he took the idea a step further by choosing an object that most people considered vulgar.
The board refused to show the work, and it was hidden away during the exhibition. Duchamp resigned from the board in protest. The urinal was photographed by Alfred Stieglitz, and the picture was published in the magazine The Blind Man together with a text defending the work. The text argued that it did not matter whether the artist had made the object with his own hands. What mattered was that he had chosen it and created a new thought for it.
The original disappeared shortly afterwards and has never been found. The only evidence of how it looked is Stieglitz’s photograph. From the 1950s onwards replicas were made with Duchamp’s approval. One of them was made in Stockholm in 1963 at the initiative of the art critic Ulf Linde and is in the Moderna Museet. The most widely distributed series was produced in 1964 in an edition of eight. Tate in London owns one of them.
Who was really behind Fountain has been questioned. In a letter of 1917 Duchamp wrote that a female friend had submitted the urinal. This has led to suggestions that the artist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven may have played a part. The theory is disputed, and most scholars still attribute the work to Duchamp.
Fountain has become one of the most debated works of art of the 20th century. It anticipated conceptual art, in which the idea matters more than the physical object. In a 2004 poll of art experts it was named the most influential modern artwork. Replicas have been attacked by visitors wanting to make an artistic gesture of their own. The question the work poses – what is art, and who decides? – is still very much alive.