Fountain was a readymade sculpture attributed to Marcel Duchamp in 1917, consisting of a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt". The work is regarded by art historians and theorists of the avant-garde as a major landmark in 20th-century art.
In April 1917, an ordinary piece of plumbing was submitted for the inaugural exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, to be staged at the Grand Central Palace in New York. When explaining the purpose of his readymade sculpture, Duchamp stated they are "everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's act of choice." In Duchamp's presentation, the urinal's orientation was altered from its usual positioning.Gavin Parkinson, The Duchamp Book: Tate Essential Artists Series, Harry N. Abrams, 2008, p. 61, Dalia Judovitz, Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit, University of California Press, 1998, pp. 124, 133, Fountain was not rejected by the committee, since Society rules stated that all works would be accepted from artists who paid the fee, but the work was never placed in the show area.Cabanne, P., & Duchamp, M. (1971). Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp Following that removal, Fountain was photographed at Alfred Stieglitz's studio, and the photo published in the Dada journal The Blind Man. The original has been lost. Sixteen replicas were commissioned from Duchamp in the 1950s and 1960s and made to his approval.
In recent years it has been proposed that the original work was by the female artist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven who submitted it to Duchamp as a friend.For a recent analysis of the reception of this story, see Krajewski, Michael: "Beuys. Duchamp: Two Stories. Two Artist Legends." In: Beuys & Duchamp. Artists of the Future. Magdalena Holzhey, Katharina Neuburger, Kornelia Röder, eds., Krefelder Kunstmuseen, Berlin 2021, p. 337–345, New research from Glyn Thompson, a former professor of art history at the University of Leeds, identifies the handwriting scrawled on the urinal as belonging to Von Freytag-Loringhoven, who was living and working in Philadelphia when the urinal was submitted to the exhibition in 1917. He also labels the urinal as a unique model made by a plumbing shop in Philadelphia—a city Duchamp never visited.
Fountain is included in the Marcel Duchamp catalogue raisonné by Arturo Schwarz; The complete works of Marcel Duchamp (number 345).Arturo Schwarz, The complete works of Marcel Duchamp, New York, Delano Greenidge, 2000
Origin
Marcel Duchamp had arrived in the United States less than two years prior to the creation of Fountain and had become involved with Francis Picabia, Man Ray, and Beatrice Wood (amongst others) in the creation of an anti-rational, anti-art, proto-Dada cultural movement in New York City.Gaffney, Peter D, "Demiurgic machines: The mechanics of New York Dada. A study of the machine art of Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and other members of New York Dada during the period, 1912–1922" (2006). Dissertations are available from ProQuest. AAI3211072.Hopkins, David, Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst: The Bride Shared, Volume 21 of Clarendon studies in the history of art, Clarendon Press, 1998, p. 74, Biro, Matthew, The Dada Cyborg: Visions of the New Human in Weimar Berlin, G – Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series, University of Minnesota Press, 2009, p. 27,
In early 1917, rumors spread that Duchamp was working on a Cubist painting titled Tulip Hysteria Co-ordinating, in preparation for the largest exhibition of modern art ever to take place in the United States.Catalogue of the First Annual Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists When Tulip Hysteria Co-ordinating did not appear at the show, those who had expected to see it were disappointed.Sue Roe, In Montparnasse: The Emergence of Surrealism in Paris, from Duchamp to Dali, Penguin UK, Jun 21, 2018, But the painting likely never existed.Dagen, Philippe, "Duchamp piège l'avant-garde", Le Monde, 17 August 2006 (French)
According to one version, the creation of Fountain began when, accompanied by artist Joseph Stella and art collector Walter Arensberg, Duchamp purchased a standard Bedfordshire model urinal from the J. L. Mott Iron Works, 118 Fifth Avenue. The artist brought the urinal to his studio at 33 West 67th Street, reoriented it 90 degrees from its originally intended position of use,To achieve an orientation resembling the photograph, an additional rotation by 180° about a vertical axis is necessary. The effect of both may be achieved by a rotation of 180° about an inclined axis.Adcock, Craig. Duchamp's Eroticism: A Mathematical Analysis, Dada/Surrealism 16 (1987): 149–167, Iowa Research Online, and wrote on it, "R. Mutt 1917".Tomkins, Duchamp: A Biography, p. 181.Saltz, Jerry (February 21, 2006), Idol Thoughts, The Village Voice. . Duchamp elaborated: Mutt comes from Mott Works, the name of a large sanitary equipment manufacturer. But Mott was too close so I altered it to Mutt, after the daily cartoon strip Mutt and Jeff which appeared at the time, and with which everyone was familiar. Thus, from the start, there was an interplay of Mutt: a fat little funny man, and Jeff: a tall thin man... I wanted any old name. And I added Richard [French slang for money-bags]. That's not a bad name for a pissotière. Get it? The opposite of poverty. But not even that much, just R. MUTT.
At the time Duchamp was a board member of the Society of Independent Artists. After much debate by the board members (most of whom did not know Duchamp had submitted it, as he had submitted the work 'under a pseudonym') about whether the piece was or was not art, Fountain was hidden from view during the show.Cabanne, Dialogs with Marcel Duchamp, p. 55 Duchamp resigned from the Board, and "withdrew" Tulip Hysteria Co-ordinating in protest."Fountain", wrote the committee, "may be a very useful object in its place, but its place is not an art exhibition, and it is by no definition, a work of art."Unsigned review, "His Art Too Crude for Independents", The New York Herald, 14 April 1917 (cited in Camfield, 1989, op.cit., 27) For this reason the work was "suppressed" (Duchamp's expression).
No, not rejected. A work can't be rejected by the Independents. It was simply suppressed. I was on the jury, but I wasn't consulted, because the officials didn't know that it was I who had sent it in; I had written the name "Mutt" on it to avoid connection with the personal. The Fountain was simply placed behind a partition and, for the duration of the exhibition, I didn't know where it was. I couldn't say that I had sent the thing, but I think the organizers knew it through gossip. No one dared mention it. I had a falling out with them, and retired from the organization. After the exhibition, we found the Fountain again, behind a partition, and I retrieved it! (Marcel Duchamp, 1971)Cabanne, Pierre, & Duchamp, Marcel, Dialogues With Marcel Duchamp, Hudson, 1971, translated from French by Ron Padgett, Da Capo Press, archive.org
The New York Dadaists stirred controversy about Fountain and its being rejected in the second issue of The Blind Man which included a photo of the piece and a letter by Alfred Stieglitz, and writings by Louise Norton, Beatrice Wood, and Arensberg.The Blind Man, Vol. 2, 1917, p. 5. An editorial, possibly written by Wood, accompanying the photograph, entitled "The Richard Mutt Case",Tomkins, Duchamp: A Biography, p. 185. made a claim that would prove to be important concerning certain works of art that would come after it:
In defense of the work being art, the piece continues, "The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges." Duchamp described his intent with the piece was to shift the focus of art from physical craft to intellectual interpretation.
In a letter dated 23 April 1917, Stieglitz wrote of the photograph he took of Fountain: "The "Urinal" photograph is really quite a wonder—Everyone who has seen it thinks it beautiful—And it's true—it is. It has an oriental look about it—a cross between a Buddha and a Veiled Woman."Naumann, Francis M., The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost: Essays on the Art, Life and Legacy of Marcel Duchamp, New York, 2012, pp. 70–81
In 1918, Mercure de France published an article attributed to Guillaume Apollinaire stating Fountain, originally titled "le Bouddha de la salle de bain" (Buddha of the bathroom), represented a sitting Buddha.Guillaume Apollinaire, Le Cas de Richard Mutt, Mercure de France, 16 June 1918, Gallica, Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The motive invoked for its refusal at the Independents were that the entry was (1) immoral and vulgar, (2) it was plagiarism, a commercial piece of plumbing. R. Mutt responded, according to Apollinaire, that the work was not immoral since similar pieces could be seen every day exposed in plumbing and bath supply stores. On the second point, R. Mutt pointed out that the fact Fountain was not made by the hand of the artist was unimportant. The importance was in the choice made by the artist. The artist chose an object of every-day life, erased its usual significance by giving it a new title, and from this point of view, gave a new purely esthetic meaning to the object.
Menno Hubregtse argues that Duchamp may have chosen Fountain as a readymade because it parodied Robert J. Coady's exaltation of industrial machines as pure forms of American art. Coady, who championed his call for American art in his publication The Soil, printed a scathing review of Jean Crotti's Portrait of Marcel Duchamp (Sculpture Made to Measure) in the December 1916 issue. Hubregtse notes that Duchamp's urinal may have been a clever response to Coady's comparison of Crotti's sculpture with "the absolute expression of a—plumber."Quoted in Hubregtse, "Robert J. Coady's The Soil and Marcel Duchamp's Fountain," 32
Shortly after its initial exhibition, Fountain was lost. According to Duchamp biographer Calvin Tomkins, the best guess is that it was thrown out as rubbish by Stieglitz, a common fate of Duchamp's early readymades.Quoted in However, the myth goes that the original Fountain was in fact not thrown out but returned to Richard Mutt by Duchamp.Marcel Duchamp to Suzanne, 11 April 1917. Jean Crotti papers, 1913–1973, bulk 1913–1961. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian InstitutionMarcel Duchamp, Affectionately, Marcel: The Selected Correspondence of Marcel Duchamp, ed. Francis M. Naumann and Hector Obalk (Ghent: Ludion Press, 2000), p. 47
The reaction engendered by Fountain continued for weeks following the exhibition submission. An article was published in Boston on 25 April 1917:
Duchamp began making miniature reproductions of Fountain in 1935, first in papier-mâché and then in porcelain, for his multiple editions of a miniature museum 'retrospective' titled Boîte-en-valise or 'box in a suitcase', 1935–1966. Duchamp carried many of these miniature works within The Suitcase which were replicas of some of his most prominent work. The first 1:1 reproduction of Fountain was authorized by Duchamp in 1950 for an exhibition in New York; two more individual pieces followed in 1953 and 1963, and then an artist's multiple was manufactured in an edition of eight in 1964.Essay on Fountain These editions ended up in a number of important public collections; Indiana University Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Canada, Centre Georges Pompidou and Tate Modern. The edition of eight was manufactured from glazed earthenware painted to resemble the original porcelain, with a signature, reproduced in black paint.
Controversy around authorship