Monday, February 22, 2010

I Gotta Pee


Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, Urinal.

Duchamp had arrived to the United States less than two years before the creation of Fountain, and had become involved with the avant-garde movement Dada, an anti-rational, anti-cultural movement based in New York City. Duchamp created the term Readymades of which he slightly alters found objects and turns them into art through a mental process of the artist.

Work on this sculpture began when Duchamp purchased a standard Bedfordshire style urinal from the J.L. Mott Iron Works company in NYC. He takes it back to his studio, turns it 90 degrees from its normal position and wrote the words "R. Mutt 1917" on the side. Hence, the name "R. Mutt" comes most likely from a play on the company that made the urinal. Other interpretations have suggested the name comes from the popular cartoon at the time, Mutt and Jeff.

Duchamp was the president of the Society of Independent Artists, and submitted the piece under the pseudonym R. Mutt, to hide his involvement with the piece, for the 1917 exhibition. The Society claimed it would "exhibit all works submitted." After much debate from the board members (many of whom did not know Duchamp submitted it) about whether the piece was art or not, the Fountain was hidden from public view during the show. Shortly after, Duchamp resigned from the society out of anger. Duchamp describes this piece as shifting the focus of art from a physical craft to an intellectual interpretation.

The isolation of a readymade object from the real world and into the world of a museum transforms the piece into a work of art. Duchamp argues that an artist's intellectual assessment is enough to create art even though he may not have created the physical object itself. But by taking a urinal out of the bathroom, turning it 90 degrees and signing it, the object becomes devoid of its functionality and focus is paid to its form and aesthetics instead, a purely artistic concept.

In 2004, Duchamp's Fountain was voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century by 500 selected British artworld professionals. Indeed, Duchamp's readymades have influenced the likes of Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jeff Koons, to name a few.

--Peesh

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