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Fountain is a 1917 work of art by Marcel Duchamp. It is one of the pieces which he called readymades (also known as found art), because he made use of an already existing object—in this case a urinal, which he titled Fountain and signed R. Mutt. Download high resolution version (594x814, 59 KB) The copyright status of this work is difficult or impossible to determine. ...
Download high resolution version (594x814, 59 KB) The copyright status of this work is difficult or impossible to determine. ...
Marcel Duchamp. ...
1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ...
1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ...
Marcel Duchamp. ...
Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. ...
A urinal is a specialized toilet designed to be used only for urination, not defecation, and almost always by a standing male. ...
Origin
Marcel Duchamp had arrived in the US less than two years previously and was teaching French to earn a living. Accompanied by the artist Joseph Stella and art collector Walter Arensberg he purchased a standard Bedfordshire model urinal from the J.L. Mott Iron Works, 118 Fifth Avenue. When the urinal was in his studio at 33 West 67th Street, he turned it ninety degrees from its normal position, and wrote on it "R. Mutt 1917". Duchamp was not really creating an aesthetic experience so much as he was making a conceptiual statement. Brooklyn Bridge by Joseph Stella. ...
Walter Arensberg was a poet, who with his wife Louise, collected art and supported artistic endeavors. ...
Like the use of the word "Dada" for the art movement, this signature is difficult to pin down precisely and seems playfully intended to be ambivalent and multi-faceted. "Mutt" is a close reference to the vendor "Mott". "Mutt and Jeff" was a popular contemporary comic strip. It is not clear whether Duchamp had in mind the German "armut" (meaning poverty), but he did state that the initial "R" stood for "Richard", which is slang in French for "moneybags". Cover of the first edition of the publication, Dada. ...
Duchamp was a board member of the Society of Independent Artists and submitted the piece to their "unjuried" 1917 exhibition, which, it had been proclaimed, would exhibit all work submitted. Duchamp's entry was immediately rejected as "not being art" (and he resigned from the board shortly afterwards). Duchamp then took "Fountain" to Alfred Stieglitz's gallery, 291 Fifth Avenue, which was about to show the work of the then-unknown Georgia O'Keefe. Stieglitz used a backdrop of The Warriors by Marsden Hartley to photograph the urinal. The exhibition entry tag can be clearly seen (it also has "R.Mutt" written on it). This original "Fountain" is now lost. Society of Independent Artists was an association of American artists founded in 1916 and based in New York. ...
Alfred Stieglitz, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1935 Alfred Stieglitz (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American-born photographer who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an acceptable art form alongside painting and sculpture. ...
Georgia O’Keeffe in Abiquiu, New Mexico, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1950 Georgia OKeeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American artist born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. ...
Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) was born in Lewiston, Maine, USA. He began his art training at the Cleveland Art Institute after moving to Cleveland, Ohio in 1892. ...
Recent events In December 2004, Duchamp's Fountain was voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century by 500 selected British artworld professionals. [1]
On January 4, 2006, while on display in the Dada show in the Pompidou Centre in Paris, Fountain was attacked by Pierre Pinoncelli, a 77 year old French performance artist, with a hammer causing a slight chip. Pinoncelli, who was arrested, said the attack was a work of performance art that Marcel Duchamp himself would have appreciated. [2] Previously in 1993 Pinoncellia urinated into the piece while it was on display in Nimes, in southern France. Both of Pinoncelli's performances derive from neo-Dadaists' and Viennese Actionists' intervention or manoeuvre. January 4 is the 4th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...
2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
The Pompidou Centres famous external skeleton of service pipes. ...
Neo-Dada is a label applied primarily to the visual arts describing artwork that has similarities in method or intent to earlier Dada artwork. ...
The term Viennese Actionism describes a short and violent movement in 20th century art that can be regarded as part of the many independent efforts of the sixties to develop action art (Fluxus, Happening, Performance, Body Art, etc. ...
See: Intervention (counseling) - an orchestrated attempt by family and friends to get a family member to get help for addiction or other similar problem. ...
A maneuver (also spelled manoeuvre) is a tactical or strategical move or action. ...
The "Fountain" attacked by Pinoncelli was actually number 5 of eight recreated by Duchamp. Another is on display in the Indiana University Art Museum, and there is one also in Tate Modern, where it too was the target of a (attempted) urination performance. Indiana University Bloomington is the principal campus of the Indiana University system. ...
Tate Modern from the Millennium Bridge Tate Modern from St Pauls Cathedral. ...
Criticism In defense of the work being art, Beatrice Wood wrote "The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges." Duchamp described his purpose with the piece as shifting the focus of art from physical craft to intellectual interpretation. For example, Fountain can be seen as a commentary on the Venus of Willendorf's exhibition as art: the purpose of the Venus is unknown and could also have been an everyday object. Beatrice Wood Beatrice Wood (March 3, 1893 – March 12, 1998) was an American artist and ceramist, who was dubbed late in life, the Mama of Dada, and died at the age of 105. ...
Venus of Willendorf The Venus of Willendorf, also known as the Woman of Willendorf, is a 11. ...
Jerry Saltz wrote in 2006:
 | Duchamp adamantly asserted that he wanted to "de-deify" the artist. The readymades provide a way around inflexible either-or aesthetic propositions. They represent a Copernican shift in art. Fountain is what's called an "acheropoietoi," an image not shaped by the hands of an artist. Fountain brings us into contact with an original that is still an original but that also exists in an altered philosophical and metaphysical state. It is a manifestation of the Kantian sublime: A work of art that transcends a form but that is also intelligible, an object that strikes down an idea while allowing it to spring up stronger. [3] |
 | Image File history File links Quotation marks File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links Quotation marks File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
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