Fountain (Duchamp)

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. 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. 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. 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).