Marcel Duchamp. Fountain (1917)

Marcel Duchamp

Stories behind the Works of Art

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Fountain (1917). Marcel Duchamp. Replica (the original is lost).

Marcel Duchamp was part of the Dada movement. One of its slogans was “we spit on everything,” and its intention was to destroy everything conceived up to that moment in order to start art “from scratch.”

In 1917, Duchamp bought a urinal (later we will explain the theory that he may not have bought it), called it Fountain, “decided” that it was a work of art, signed it as if it were a work of art (he used the pseudonym R. Mutt) and sent it to the Society of Independent Artists in the United States to be included in that year’s exhibition.

Although a few years ago the artist had already invented the readymade (the work of art made from an object manufactured for a practical everyday use, which is not the same as being a work of art), the commotion caused by the urinal in a museum was such that two fundamental things for the history of art were born:

1. The discussion (which would never end) about what is art and what is not art began.
2. It is the first step of conceptual art in which the idea that is transmitted is more valuable than the work itself (which is often ephemeral, it disappears). It is art that is perceived more by reason than by the senses, art that provokes more intellectually than aesthetically. From that moment until today, we see conceptual art and we also see art and entire artistic movements with a great deal of conceptuality.

In a New York art magazine from 1917, The Blind Man, there is a well-known review of this work: “Whether or not Mr. Mutt made The Fountain with his own hands 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 new point of view — he created a new thought for that object.”

Many decades later, the theory emerged that perhaps the urinal signed as a work of art may have been a gift from an artist friend of Duchamp’s named Elsa von Freitag. In spite of the discussion about the authorship (even if it was Elsa’s, Duchamp would still be the one who “invented” the readymade and who sent the work to the exhibition), the work still has the importance for the history of art to which we are referring.

Finally, let us keep in mind that this provocation by Duchamp, which decades later would be continued by Andy Warhol (and that is why he will be considered one of the most influential artists of the second half of the century), enriches our gaze by breaking all preconceptions we have about the common, ordinary, everyday object and stimulates us to “look” at the world around us with new eyes.

Recommended links:

Dada.

Cabaret Voltaire.

The “Avant-garde” Movements.

Surrealism.

Psychic automatism.

The Exquisite Corpse Game.

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