How Marcel Duchamp took the piss

By Fiammetta Rocco

In the spring of 1917, when Europe’s armies were mired in bloody stalemate, Marcel Duchamp, a young sculptor who had fled France to join the roiling New York art world, took a porcelain urinal, flipped it on its back, signed his name as “R. Mutt” and christened the piece a work of art. He paid $6 to show it as “Fountain” in the inaugural exhibition of the American Society of Independent Artists. At an emergency meeting, the organisers rejected it. Though they prided themselves on championing everything new and progressive, this was too much. It wasn’t art. Or was it?

A little magazine called the Blind Man, co-edited by Duchamp, ignited a debate still running today. “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 – and created a new thought for the object.”