FROM ISSUE 32#3: WHAT’S THE USE? À Propos Use: Duchamp and the Canon

VITA OSTENDORF

Marcel Duchamp’s notorious readymade Fountain (1917) has squeezed itself into art history and later proved to be of great importance to other art movements. The journey of its presence and absence offers valuable insights into the different means that can be employed to bestow a certain status upon an artwork. Despite current, lingering uncertainty regarding who originated the idea for Fountain, Duchamp’s manipulation of public perception and strategic use of reproduction underscore his reach.

The Rejected Fountain

Fountain is a Dadaist readymade that was famously rejected for the first exhibition of The Society of Independent Artists (1917) in New York.[1] The mechanically produced porcelain urinal was not ‘made’ by the artist, but merely bought and signed by a non-existing R. Mutt. The decision to submit  Fountain for this exhibition organised by The Society of Independent Artists made sense specifically given the organisation’s unconventional ethos. Playing by different rules than your average exhibition: the board allowed everyone willing to pay the admission price of $6 to display their work. However, the board of The Society did not expect to come across a urinal on the day of the opening, and immediately decided to refuse and hide it from the public.[2] Clearly, Fountain was not considered a serious artwork.

Meanwhile, Duchamp, himself a member of The Society’s board, secretly watched his colleagues reject his anonymous application, and decided to resign from the board.[3] To make a statement about the hypocrisy of this decision, he decided to publish on ‘The Case of R. Mutt’ in the Dadaist magazine The Blind Man, of which he was the co-editor. Various authors denounced the The Society’s preconceptions about what art should be.[4] As artist Beatrice Wood commented:

“Now, Mr. Mutts fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bath tub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers’ show windows. Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not 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.”[5]

Make it stand out

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

The articles were accompanied by the first reproduction of Fountain: a photograph by Alfred Stieglitz.[6] After this publication, New York’s art scene was finally introduced to Fountain, the readymade so shocking that it was not deemed art. However, the only problem now was that Fountain had been lost. Art historians are still unsure about what happened with the original after it left Stieglitz’s studio.[7] Consequently, because it came to be physically absent, its momentum soon died out. [8]

Now, more than a hundred years after the publication about Fountain in The Blind Man, texts about this series of events have been reproduced when the work is presented in museums, exhibitions, books, and documentaries. The initial rejection of the sculpture is framed to be the artwork’s full story. Such a narrative leaves out a the irony of how an artwork was rejected, unaccepted, and even lost, while now the opposite is true; Fountain is displayed all over the world, and considered a canonical sculpture for Dada and conceptual art. How could that be? What happened between then and now that flipped the urinal’s reputation? After the momentum it had following the rejection and publication, Fountain was not seen publicly or written about for at least twenty five years. The relative attention it got compared to other art by Duchamp was small and only decreased as Duchamp eventually started stepping away from art to focus on chess around 1920.[9] Only when the first physical reproduction was made, Fountain became a part of public discourse again, gaining a reputation. Yet this only happened in 1950 – within a totally different (art-historical) context.

The Reproductions

What all canonical artworks have in common is their visibility. While this may sound simple, it is crucial; if an artwork is to be retained and interpreted by many people, its perceptibility is key. As a readymade, Fountain was easy to reproduce. In 1950, Duchamp was invited to partake in the Dadaist group exhibition, Challenge and Defy: Extreme Examples by XX Century Artists, French and American, by the New York gallerist Sidney Janis. Janis, a popular art collector who would greatly influence modern art,[10] proposed to Duchamp to include Fountain in the show.[11] It would mark Fountain’s first public appearance through its first physical replica: a vintage urinal that Janis scavenged on a flea market, authenticated by Duchamp’s signature.[12] The same Janis replica would be a part of a group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York eleven years later in 1961, called The Art of Assemblage. Although Fountain was not highlighted as Duchamp’s most important artwork in the accompanying catalogue written by curator William Seitz, he nonetheless described Duchamp as an intelligent and enigmatic individual.[13] Eventually, Duchamp’s persona would become an essential factor in the reception of his body of work. 

In 1963 and 1964, two other reproductions were carried out, both of a different character. In 1963, the year Duchamp witnessed his first retrospective exhibition in California, Fountain was reproduced in Europe by the Swedish art critic Ulf Linde.[14] Linde was an admirer of Duchamp’s oeuvre and was engaged in the process of reproducing each of his readymades – out of pure passion. While Duchamp did not witness this process in person, he approved the reproductions and contacted Linde via letters and telegrams. A year later, in 1964, another admirer of Duchamp, Arturo Schwarz, arranged to replicate his work with him.[15] This time with a contract for commercial purposes; all thirteen readymades were reproduced in a series of eight to be shown at the exhibition Hommage to Marcel Duchamp. Aside from some extra reproductions intended for the gallerist and the artist themselves, all replicas were intended to be sold after exhibiting.[16] Arturo Schwarz also published a catalogue raisonné about Duchamp’s entire oeuvre called The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp (1964),[17] solidifying Fountain’s place in the artistic canon.

By allowing Fountain to be reproduced, the visibility of the work expanded. Not just because the frequency of reproduction had increased, but also because Duchamp was criticised for multiplying his work. In public interviews, for example, questions were raised about Duchamp’s intentions.[18] Privately, he was contacted by his network, including Alfred Barr, the director of the MoMA, who had written Duchamp to express his discontents about the unnotified reproductions and the possible depreciation of the Janis-replica from 1950 now housed in the MoMA’s collection.[19] However, decades later, the reproductions would prove lucrative. With all this visibility, public attention, books, and exhibitions that included Fountain, the portrayal of the urinal and the artist became explicit. Especially in Schwarz’s catalogue raisonné, in which Duchamp’s personality is described, Duchamp’s status becomes larger than life. Schwarz presented quotes by Duchamp and other intellectuals, like the great chess player Aaron Nimzowitsch and others like Plato and Shakespeare, alongside each other..[20] The catalogue, therefore, insinuates these are Duchamp’s peers. Within Duchamp’s conceptual context, it is not the applicatory technique of the maker that makes the artist, it is the use of the catalogue that cements his status. 

Multiple art-historical contexts

There is a historical discrepancy when we consider the gap in time between the conception of Fountain in 1917 and the last commercial reproduction in 1964, when Duchamp had started to be considered an old master, aged seventy-seven. In 1917, Fountain’s statement clearly fit within Dada’s legacy. But when he decided to reproduce Fountain, it appears Duchamp was influenced by a different art-historical context. It is rather likely that around the sixties  newer movements, such as Neo-Dada and Pop Art, had caught his attention.[21] This reference was already made in the press in 1964, where an American interviewer called Duchamp the ‘daddy of Dada’ or maybe even ‘the granddad of Pop.’ Duchamp would undoubtedly have answered that he could appreciate the ‘sensible’ side of Pop Art. If we consider the context, it is plausible that he would have consciously anticipated the popularity of Pop Art. For example, Duchamp and Warhol had met in 1963, the year after Warhol’s iconic Campbell Soup’s Cans (1962); and in 1964, Warhol exhibited his immensely popular sculpture Brillo Boxes, which is effectively a readymade: a stack of commercial packaging. It is, therefore, likely that Warhol’s popularity inspired Duchamp.[22]   

Near the end of Duchamp’s life in the sixties, he witnessed several worldwide retrospectives of his work. However, the economic value of most of his art increased incredibly years after his passing in 1968. In 1999, Fountain was sold for the first time for over a million dollars (1.7M USD) at an auction.[23] The buyer cited its representation of the origin of contemporary art as the reason for the purchase. The International Herald Tribune contextualised this acquisition by highlighting not just the increase of activity on the art market in general, but also that: 

“the new generation of buyers take note of a name with celebrity, like Marcel Duchamp. The Punch, the bang, is essential, the detail barely relevant.”[24] 

This underscores how the public’s perception of  Duchamp and Fountain is centred around their reputation. Evidently, catalogues and exhibitions play a crucial role in defining what should be retained about the artist and his work. 

In the case of Fountain, what history did not tell us is how and when the readymade was perceived by a public. However, the clear documentation of what happened with Fountain in 1917 has lent historical backing to ensure the object’s continued popularity in later books, catalogues, and articles.  What matters is not how many people read The Blind Man and the article about Fountain in 1917. What matters most is that the story was reproduced so many times and has become so comprehensible within the art historical canon that we can now rely on its logic. And indeed, it does follow that Duchamp influenced later art movements in the twentieth century, as he was alive and kicking exactly around that time, albeit as an old master. The repetition and reproduction of this readymade, combined with many external factors, like a growing art market or connections with museums, have made this artwork iconic. Fountain, therefore, serves an extremely important function in the logic of conceptual art and the art. How the urinal is made or what it looks like is barely relevant. Duchamp might have eliminated the function of the pot, but he allowed the concept of reception to work in his favour.

Vita Ostendorf (1996) holds a BA in Art History and is currently an MA student in Museum Studies at the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory, and Material Culture at the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests include the ambiguity of the transmission of memory, and the larger institutional dynamics which define heritage. 

[1] William Camfield, “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: Its History and Aesthetics in the Context of 1917,” in Marcel Duchamp, red. Rudolf Kuenzli en Francis Naumann (Londen: The MIT Press, 1989): 64-94.  

[2] Camfield, “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: Its History and Aesthetics in the Context of 1917,” 71.  

[3] Camfield, “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: Its History and Aesthetics in the Context of 1917,” 71.  

[4] Ibid, 76.

[5] Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché and Beatrice Wood, “The Richard Mutt Case,” in The Blind Man, ed. Marcel Duchamp (New York: H.P. Roché, 1917): 5.  

[6] Duchamp, Roché and Wood, “The Richard Mutt Case,” in The Blind Man, 1917, 4.  

[7] Camfield, “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: Its History and Aesthetics in the Context of 1917,” 88.

[8] Francis Naumann, The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost: Essays on the Art, Life and Legacy of Marcel Duchamp (New York: Readymade Press, 2012): 70-81.

[9] Camfield, “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: Its History and Aesthetics in the Context of 1917,” 81.  

[10] Malcolm Goldstein, Landscape with Figures: A History of Art Dealing in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000): 264.  

[11] Adina Kamien-Kazhdan, Remaking the Readymade: Duchamp, Man Ray, and the Conundrum of the Replica (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018): 88.

[12]  Francis Naumann, The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost: Essays on the Art, Life and Legacy of Marcel Duchamp (New York: Readymade Press, 2012): 76.

[13] Naumann, The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost, 76. 

[14]  Kamien-Kazhdan, Remaking the Readymade, 96.

[15]Naumann, The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost, 77. 

[16] Kamien-Kazhdan, Remaking the Readymade, 148. 

[17] Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp (New York: Harry N. Abrams Publishers, 1964). 

[18] Kamien-Kazhdan, Remaking the Readymade, 262.

[19] Kamien-Kazhdan, Remaking the Readymade, 164.  

[20] Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, 46. 

[21] Bradley Bailey, “Before, During, and Beyond the Brillo Box: The Impact of Pop on the 1964 Edition of Duchamp’s Readymades,” Visual Resources, 34:3-4, 348.

[22] Naumann, Marcel Duchamp: Of de kunst om niet in de herhaling te vallen (Gent: Ludion, 1999): 258.

[23] Kamien-Kazhdan, Remaking the Readymade, 277.

[24] Souren Melikian, “Art’s Bull Market” in International Herald Tribune (The New York Times), 19 november 1999. <https://www-nytimes-com.proxy.uba.uva.nl/1999/11/19/style/IHT-arts-bull-market.html?searchResultPosition=1>.