He “now wants more than his dues returned. “Richard Mutt threatens to sue,” the newspaper states. and it will be a bit of gossip of some value in New York.” 3 The identity of the “female friend” has remained unknown, although Duchamp’s own predilection for female surrogates, in his work and in his life, is well documented.įollowing the story carefully, The Boston Evening Transcript for April 25 reports that Richard Mutt is contemplating action against the society for refusing the object. The committee has decided to refuse to exhibit this thing. On April 11, Duchamp writes to his sister Suzanne, in Paris, of the object’s succès de scandale, and hints at the existence of a gender/impersonation ruse: “One of my female friends under a masculine pseudonym, Richard Mutt, sent in a porcelain urinal as a sculpture. Some time later, having sown the seeds of its afterlife, the original urinal disappears-a fate shared, incidentally, by almost all of Duchamp’s original readymades (if the word “original” is appropriate here). Fountain has engendered its first likeness and memorialization. Within ten days after the April 9 opening of the exhibition, the object is carried to the gallery of Alfred Stieglitz, who photographs it. Fountain has precipitated its first critical disagreement. The society’s board of directors turns down the object.

'I’m afraid we would,” replies Arensberg such is his respect for esthetic modernity. “Do you mean that if an artist put horse manure on a canvas and sent it to the exhibition, we would have to accept it?” “ was facing Walter, his body on a menacing slant, his fists doubled, striking at the air in anger.” Bellows queries Arensberg: Yet Bellows is instead gripped by a powerful tension. According to eyewitness Beatrice Wood, Bellows stands beside the object, under normal circumstances a position known to lead to physical relief. The object is taken as an offensive joke.Ĭollector Arensberg, who is disposed to see it otherwise, confers with fellow society-board-member George Bellows over the propriety of Fountain. This “work of art” is not only a porcelain urinal, but one bearing a reference to the period’s famous comic strip characters Mutt and Jeff. Duchamp, however, appears to have contrived his role only so as to engineer a disruption of the event, by introducing into it an object that would pose an affront to the public, and would imperil the society’s aspiration to social legitimacy. Mutt is said to be upset, though this turn of events surely does not surprise Duchamp, who is a member of the society and has been instrumental in organizing the exhibition. We presume that these two urinals are one and the same.ĭisregarding its own policy of open admission, the society rejects Fountain (hereafter “the object'). Mutt 1917,” to the Society of Independent Artists for inclusion in their show of modern art at New York’s Grand Central Palace. Several weeks later, a “Richard Mutt” of Philadelphia submits a urinal, signed “R. Mott by Duchamp, who has instigated the purchase, and by the painter Joseph Stella.

Let us one more time review the facts and the fictions:Īrt patron and collector Walter Arensberg, of Boston and New York, is said by Marcel Duchamp and other witnesses to have purchased a porcelain urinal at the J.L.

In bringing the dossier up to date, then, the undersigned investigators advise that there can be and will be no break in the case. (“The spectator makes the picture,” 1 Duchamp said, even as he produced or authorized some 688 replicas and facsimiles.) These subsequent appearances of the urinal further obscure the trail. And the original Fountain, aka a “readymade,” has been continually remade, in reproductions, recuperations, and reinscriptions that have usurped the first urinal. Interpretations of it have accumulated, displacing, contradicting, ignoring, and supplementing each other. In addition, the central piece of evidence has never been recovered. Even if he were here to bear witness, one still would never know exactly what transpired that spring in New York, or its significance. Marcel Duchamp, the principal figure in the case, has been dead now exactly twenty years. You have approved an investigation into the appearance, disappearance, and subsequent reappearances of Fountain. In February 1917, a urinal known as Fountain was submitted to the Society of Independent Artists, in New York City, which rejected it for exhibition, whereupon it was transported to the gallery of Alfred Stieglitz, at 291 Fifth Avenue, and photographed in front of an American abstract painting by Marsden Hartley. Endlessly solved, the case remains endlessly open.

R mutt 1917