In 1917, A Urinal Changed the Course of Art
History!
For the price of 1$, the Society of Independent
Artists declared that any artist could become
a member, and that any member can pay $5 to
enter a work to the Independents Exhibition.
It was the largest show of modern art in America,
and was meant to be a forward looking intellectual
stand against what they perceived to be a
conservative and stifling attitude of the
National Academy.
Marcel Duchamp entered a work to the show,
and, as you can probably guessed, it was a urinal!
 
It wasn’t a urinal that he sculpted from
porcelain or baked in a kiln, it was a perfectly
made, mass produced, ordinary urinal that
Duchamp bought in a store.
He took the work, placed it on its back, and
signed and dated the work “R. Mutt 1917.”
He named his work “Fountain”
In other words, Duchamp appropriated an existing
object, he rendered it non-functional, and
positioned it as a work of art. He called
this new form of art making “readymades”
So why did Duchamp sign his work with the
pseudonym R. Mutt? One part of the answer
may be that Duchamp was actually the director
of the Society and was part of the organising
committee, but another part was the Duchamp
loved to play with words.
The name Mutt may be a play on the word Mott,
which is the name of the store where Duchamp
bought the urinal, but it is said to also
reference the popular comic “Mutt and Jeff,”
in the comic, Mutt was a dimwitted, greedy
character always coming up with get-rich-quick
schemes, and Jeff was his gullible sidekick,
who was an inmate of a mental asylum. So this
can be Duchamp’s way of poking fun at the
pompous art world. In fact, it has been suggested
that R. stands for Richard, which is a French
colloquialism for “moneybags”
So when the urinal arrived at the Exhibition
hall, Duchamp’s co-directors actually refused
to show the Fountain, despite having the $6
attached, which was required to enter the show.
The unjuried show accepted all 2,125 works
of 1,235 artists, all except the work of R. Mutt
Many felt that it was insulting, some thought
it was a joke. And In fact, it disappeared.
A possible remake was photographed a few days
later, but that too disappeared.
Duchamp, of course, was quick to point out
that the “liberal and progressive” art
Society was failing to carry out what they
originally set out to do.
“The Richard Mutt Case,” published in
a magazine through Duchamp’s prozy, Beatrice
Wood read:
Whether Mr Mutt made the fountain with his
own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE
it. He took an article of life, placed it
so that its useful significance disappeared
under the new title and point of view – created
a new thought for that object.
The Fountain forces the viewer to leave old
questions of art behind. No longer are we
concerned with aesthetic questions of craft,
medium, and taste. Arise are new questions
that are ontological, epistemological, and
institutional. Questions still called debated
to this day.
