The Fountain
apparently the US Justice Department found out someone purchased Monet and a Van Gogh's piece using corrupted money. It would be hilarious if they purchased Duchamp's iconic 20th century ( screw you piece ) called The Fountain.
About the Fountain
Rose from a discussion with collector Walter Arensberg (1878–1954) and the artist Joseph Stella (1877–1946) in New York. Duchamp purchased a urinal from a sanitary ware supplier and submitted it – or arranged for it to be submitted – as an artwork by ‘R. Mutt’ to the newly established Society of Independent The society’s board of directors, who were bound by the Society’s constitution to accept all members’ submissions, took exception to Fountain, believing that a piece of sanitary ware – and one associated with bodily waste – could not be considered a work of art and furthermore was indecent (presumably, although this was not said, if displayed to women).
Following a discussion and a vote, the directors present during the installation of the show at the Grand Central Palace (about ten of them according to a report in the New York Herald) narrowly decided on behalf of the board to exclude the submission from the Society’s inaugural exhibition that opened to the public on 10 April 1917. Arensberg and Duchamp resigned in protest against the board taking it upon itself to veto and effectively censor an artist’s work.
This was no small matter. The idea of having a jury-free exhibition of contemporary art had become invested with the aspirations of many in the art world for New York to become a dynamic artistic centre that would rival and even outstrip Paris. The committee accept it.
Responding to press interest in the affair, the board issued a statement defending its position: ‘The Fountain may be a very useful object in its place, but its place is not in an art exhibition and it is, by no definition, a work of art.’ (Naumann 2012, p.72.)
Duchamp never explicitly commented on why he wanted to test the principles of his fellow board members but it may well have sprung from his own experience at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. In 1912 he had submitted his important painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2 to the Salon, and, even though the work was listed in the catalogue, the organisers, increasingly unhappy at the subject and title of the painting and how this reflected upon them, asked Duchamp’s brothers, who were also artists, to ask him to withdraw it a few days before the show opened. He quietly did so, but he experienced this as an extraordinary betrayal and later described it as a turning-point in his life. The creation and submission of Fountain can thus be seen as in part as an experiment by Duchamp to replay this event, testing the commitment of the new American Society to freedom of expression and its tolerance of new conceptions of art.
Within a day or so of the exhibition opening, Duchamp located the work, which had been stored in the exhibition space behind a partition, and took it to be photographed by the leading photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz (1877–1946).
As the work of art was lost thereafter (and had been seen by very few people), Stieglitz’s photograph, which according to a letter had been taken by 19 April 1917, became a key document in recording the work’s existence. Stieglitz was proud of the image, writing in a letter dated 23 April 1917, ‘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 2012, p.74).
A slightly cropped version of the photograph was published in the Blind Man to illustrate an anonymous editorial that defended the urinal in clear – and, in their implications, revolutionary – terms: ‘Mr Mutt’s fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bathtub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers’ shop windows. Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary 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.’ (Anon., ‘The Richard Mutt Case’, Blind Man, New York, no.2, May 1917, p.5; note that the second issue formulated the journal’s title as separate words.)
Duchamp later said that he shared and approved of the views expressed in the article.
Duchamp later explained that he had not made his identity known because of his position on the Society’s board: if his fellow board members had known he had submitted Fountain, their response might well have been different, and he would have been shown to have put friends and colleagues in a potentially difficult position (which, indeed, was the case).
The fact that ‘R. Mutt’ was an unknown artist meant that Duchamp could test the openness of the society to artworks that did not conform to conventional aesthetic and moral standards without compromising the outcome or his relationships with board members, though at the expense of being able to avow that the work was his own.
Duchamp retired from art and focus on playing chess.
About the Fountain
Rose from a discussion with collector Walter Arensberg (1878–1954) and the artist Joseph Stella (1877–1946) in New York. Duchamp purchased a urinal from a sanitary ware supplier and submitted it – or arranged for it to be submitted – as an artwork by ‘R. Mutt’ to the newly established Society of Independent The society’s board of directors, who were bound by the Society’s constitution to accept all members’ submissions, took exception to Fountain, believing that a piece of sanitary ware – and one associated with bodily waste – could not be considered a work of art and furthermore was indecent (presumably, although this was not said, if displayed to women).
Following a discussion and a vote, the directors present during the installation of the show at the Grand Central Palace (about ten of them according to a report in the New York Herald) narrowly decided on behalf of the board to exclude the submission from the Society’s inaugural exhibition that opened to the public on 10 April 1917. Arensberg and Duchamp resigned in protest against the board taking it upon itself to veto and effectively censor an artist’s work.
This was no small matter. The idea of having a jury-free exhibition of contemporary art had become invested with the aspirations of many in the art world for New York to become a dynamic artistic centre that would rival and even outstrip Paris. The committee accept it.
Responding to press interest in the affair, the board issued a statement defending its position: ‘The Fountain may be a very useful object in its place, but its place is not in an art exhibition and it is, by no definition, a work of art.’ (Naumann 2012, p.72.)
Duchamp never explicitly commented on why he wanted to test the principles of his fellow board members but it may well have sprung from his own experience at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. In 1912 he had submitted his important painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2 to the Salon, and, even though the work was listed in the catalogue, the organisers, increasingly unhappy at the subject and title of the painting and how this reflected upon them, asked Duchamp’s brothers, who were also artists, to ask him to withdraw it a few days before the show opened. He quietly did so, but he experienced this as an extraordinary betrayal and later described it as a turning-point in his life. The creation and submission of Fountain can thus be seen as in part as an experiment by Duchamp to replay this event, testing the commitment of the new American Society to freedom of expression and its tolerance of new conceptions of art.
Within a day or so of the exhibition opening, Duchamp located the work, which had been stored in the exhibition space behind a partition, and took it to be photographed by the leading photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz (1877–1946).
As the work of art was lost thereafter (and had been seen by very few people), Stieglitz’s photograph, which according to a letter had been taken by 19 April 1917, became a key document in recording the work’s existence. Stieglitz was proud of the image, writing in a letter dated 23 April 1917, ‘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 2012, p.74).
A slightly cropped version of the photograph was published in the Blind Man to illustrate an anonymous editorial that defended the urinal in clear – and, in their implications, revolutionary – terms: ‘Mr Mutt’s fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bathtub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers’ shop windows. Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary 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.’ (Anon., ‘The Richard Mutt Case’, Blind Man, New York, no.2, May 1917, p.5; note that the second issue formulated the journal’s title as separate words.)
Duchamp later said that he shared and approved of the views expressed in the article.
Duchamp later explained that he had not made his identity known because of his position on the Society’s board: if his fellow board members had known he had submitted Fountain, their response might well have been different, and he would have been shown to have put friends and colleagues in a potentially difficult position (which, indeed, was the case).
The fact that ‘R. Mutt’ was an unknown artist meant that Duchamp could test the openness of the society to artworks that did not conform to conventional aesthetic and moral standards without compromising the outcome or his relationships with board members, though at the expense of being able to avow that the work was his own.
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