Drinking From Urinals

In the spring of 1917 Marcel Duchamp submitted a turned over urinal, under an assumed name, to the Society of Independent Artists in the hopes it would be featured in an upcoming exhibition. The piece was titled, "Fountain". It would soon become, what many consider, the Twentieth Century's most debated and contentious work of art.

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist who immigrated to New York in the early 1915. He would soon become the face of the fledgling New York Dada movement. Dada emerged, at least in part, as reaction to the societal upheaval and violence of the first World War. Dadaists lay the blame for this global atrocity at the feet of Enlightenment Reasoning. As the Dadaist pendulum swung hard and heavy away from logic and reason it found itself, maybe rather predictably, embracing themes of irrationality and intuition over all else. Even the name Dada was chosen by a random and ridiculous act. A knife was plunged into a French-German dictionary, with the knifepoint landing of a French word for a child's hobbyhorse. Dadaism was born.

As it pertained to the art world Dadaists sought to undermine the status quo of traditional art and their long-held cherished beliefs. All hail irreverence! With Dadaism nothing was taken for granted. Everything was up for grabs. Even the very definition of art was called into question. However the Dada movement wasn't just about tearing down tradition without any ideas as to what should replace it. Their quest to redefine art led to countless new avenues and mediums for artistic expression. New worlds opened up. And with the irreverent nature of the movement an underlying thread of humor and whimsy wound its way through Dadaism.

This rather dramatic rift in the early Twentieth Century art world is where Marcel Duchamp would find his home. Around 1913 Duchamp began experimenting with what he called "ready-mades". Ready-mades were what he called common items he repurposed or reframed with his own artistic intent.

Duchamp's Fountain was one of these ready-mades in which he laid a urinal on its back and painted the pseudonym "R Mutt" on its rim. He created the piece as a submission to the Society of Independent Artists. Duchamp was actually a founding member of the Society, which was created, in no small part, to promote artistic freedom. It was agreed that any submission by a Society member would be accepted and displayed. Duchamp's choice, and submission, of this particular piece was meant to be a sort of artistic gauntlet thrown down to challenge the Artistic Society and its public declaration of open-mindedness. To keep things fair he submitted it under an assumed name. Uneasy about the prospect of featuring the crude submission, society members decided to hold a vote as to whether or not it would be featured in their upcoming exhibition. They votes were tallied and Fountain was rejected. Duchamp resigned his position in response to what he perceived as the Society's moral failing.

Because the Fountain was submitted under a false name Duchamp now had to figure out how to retrieve the piece without giving away his identity as creator. He managed to successfully smuggle it to an undisclosed location where his friend and renowned photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, took the iconic black and white photograph associated with the controversial piece.

Duchamp's Fountain is, by its very nature, difficult to describe in technical artistic terms, such as line and composition. What is Fountain exactly? Is it Stieglitz's photograph? Is it the tipped over urinal that the members voted on in 1917? Is it both of these things, and much more? Is it neither? The photograph itself is a rather plain yet bold depiction of the repurposed urinal. It has a bit of a utilitarian feel. The only visual flair is the "R. Mutt 1917" signature crudely scrawled on the Fountain's rim. The black background of Stieglitz's photograph ads to a dramatic contrast to the white sanitary china, which in turn succeeds in adding a weight to the picture. Being that the urinal is laid down gives the perception that it could actually be some sort of decommissioned European drinking fountain, shelved for eventual disposal, as the title suggests.

The themes behind the Fountain as well, and Duchamp's general artistic theories, went on to inspire future generations of artists. In 1956 Pop artist Richard Hamilton created a small collage titled, Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? Using cutouts from magazines Hamilton created a fantasy room cramped with domestic consumer iconography. In the piece he plays with media depictions of idealized physiques using a black and white cutout of a bodybuilder holding a bright oversized sucker in his fist. His female counterpart, also in black and white, sits provocatively on the couch with pasties covering her nipples and a lampshade on her head. The room is littered with various consumer products: a television, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a canned ham, a vacuum, and a window that looks out onto a movie theater facade.

Hamilton was admittedly influenced by Duchamp's ideas about art, and its purpose. Like Duchamp's ready-mades, Hamilton didn't create the content of his collage, he chose them. Hamilton's collage is a challenge to the traditional norms of the time as he seems to mocks the consumerism of his era. To do this he coopts typical consumer iconography. Most importantly, Duchamp's and Hamilton's pieces both rely on on the perceptions of those viewing the work.

Though both pieces rely on interpretation, they differ in degree. Hamilton's collage does much more of the work than Duchamp's does. Fountain is more minimalist in its delivery. The space around, behind, and underneath the solitary urinal allows, no demands, the viewer to take a personal stand about the meaning of the piece. Hamilton's collage on the other hand is packed full of items laden with innuendo. It is much more overt, altogether brighter, louder, more in your face, and as I see it, more obtuse in its delivery. Duchamp's Fountain is more subtle in its insinuations making, in my opinion, it more provocative and profound.

I guess it was Duchamp's intention to force this interpretation of the Fountain. I like that. Fountain's detractors claim it isn't art because Duchamp didn't create the piece, he simply acquired it, laid it down, and scrawled a fake name on its side. Fountain's proponents point out that the piece's sole purpose was to question artistic norms, not inspire aesthetic awe. It doesn't matter that he didn't create the urinal, he chose the urinal, and by placing it as he did he created a different perspective and usage contrary to it's original purpose. It is this act of creativity, the context involved, and the act of submitting the piece as an act of instigation against a Society of Artists that makes Duchamp's Fountain a genuine, if not typical, work of art.

I knew about Duchamp's Fountain before taking this course. Like most people I had my preconceived notions. I even brought it up in our first in-person class. I mentioned Piss Christ as subjective bullshit. You, professor, referenced Duchamp's Fountain as a similarly rebuked piece of art. To me Fountain was just some artsy hack trying to get over. I was at least partially right. The purpose, at least in part, of Duchamp's hackery was to make a mockery of the art world and its gatekeepers while asking every individual viewer what art actually is. The last part is entirely subjective. Duchamp's point, I suspect, wasn't to settle the debate about art, it was to have the debate. In this he certainly succeeded.

In the course of this class, and researching this essay, I now have a completely different opinion of Fountain. If this evolution of thought isn't what higher education is all about, then I don't know what is. And if this stirring engagement isn't what art is all about then I am again out of ideas.