{"id":765230,"date":"2026-09-09T16:54:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T16:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/765230\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T16:54:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T16:54:22","slug":"fountain-might-make-you-laugh-or-scowl-but-asks-important-questions-a-philly-art-historian-explains-why-marcel-duchamps-iconic-1917-sculpture-still-provokes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/765230\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Fountain\u2019 might make you laugh or scowl but asks important questions \u2013 a Philly art historian explains why Marcel Duchamp\u2019s iconic 1917 sculpture still\u00a0provokes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marcel Duchamp\u2019s \u201cFountain\u201d is not for everyone<\/a> \u2013 and it does not need to be. <\/p>\n

But it does encapsulate a central concern in the philosophy of art: What makes something art, and who gets to decide? <\/p>\n

Whatever our tastes, art can challenge accepted systems and make us reconsider what we think we know. <\/p>\n

Duchamp\u2019s friend and chess partner John Cage observed in 1988<\/a>, \u201cI can\u2019t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I\u2019m frightened of the old ones.\u201d \u201cFountain\u201d embodies this thinking.<\/p>\n

A version of \u201cFountain\u201d is part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art\u2019s permanent collection and will appear in the museum\u2019s upcoming Duchamp retrospective<\/a>, which opens Oct. 10, 2026, and runs through Jan. 31, 2027. The exhibition will revisit Duchamp\u2019s enduring questions about what art is and what it can be. <\/p>\n

As an art historian<\/a> and former Philadelphia Museum of Art staff lecturer, I have developed an intimate knowledge of Duchamp\u2019s art through years of teaching his work. During and after my tenure at the museum, I presented 101 lectures and led 25 gallery-based programs. Some of these focused directly on Duchamp, while others explored broader questions about originality, authorship, intention, skill and value. <\/p>\n

These questions are embedded in the remarkable story of \u201cFountain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Black-and-white<\/a><\/p>\n

Artist Marcel Duchamp looks at his major work \u2018The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)\u2019 in 1965.
\n Mark Kauffman\/Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

Courting \u2018ready-made\u2019 controversy<\/p>\n

The 1917 original \u201cFountain\u201d survives only in photographs, but 14 authorized full-scale replicas followed. The Philadelphia Museum of Art owns the earliest, signed by Duchamp in 1950.<\/p>\n

\u201cFountain\u201d continued a press narrative about Duchamp\u2019s work that had begun four years earlier when his 1912 painting \u201cNude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)<\/a>\u201d became a sensation at the 1913 Armory Show in New York City. Journalist Julian Street remarked that it resembled \u201cthe explosion of a shingle factory<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former president Theodore Roosevelt declared that a Navajo rug in his bathroom was \u201ca far more satisfactory and decorative picture<\/a>\u201d than the cubist artists on display at the armory.<\/p>\n

By 1917, Duchamp knew that controversy could compel audiences to debate what qualified as art. With \u201cFountain\u201d that debate became part of the artwork.<\/p>\n

Its story began with the Society of Independent Artists exhibition in New York in April 1917. Duchamp had helped found the society and establish its democratic premise that every member could exhibit without a jury. He tested that principle by purchasing a porcelain urinal, turning it on its side, signing it \u201cR. Mutt 1917\u201d and submitting it under a pseudonym. <\/p>\n

The organizers excluded it from the official display and placed it behind a partition outside the main exhibition area. Collector Walter Arensberg, Duchamp\u2019s friend and fellow board member, defended it<\/a> and reportedly intended to purchase it<\/a>. Both men resigned in protest.<\/p>\n

Alfred Stieglitz<\/a> photographed \u201cFountain\u201d at his 291 gallery<\/a> positioned in front of Marsden Hartley\u2019s 1913 painting \u201cThe Warriors<\/a>.\u201d The painting depicts a German military parade, and the title of the painting suggests a battle between old and new ways of thinking. Stieglitz\u2019s photograph appeared in the May 1917 issue of The Blind Man<\/a>, a short-lived New York avant-garde art magazine, alongside an editorial that argued that Duchamp\u2019s act of choosing an ordinary object created \u201ca new thought for that object.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Black-and-white<\/p>\n

Alfred Stieglitz\u2019s photograph of \u2018Fountain\u2019 in front of Marsden Hartley\u2019s 1913 painting \u2018The Warriors.\u2019
\n Alfred Stieglitz, The Blind Man No. 2, May 1917, The University of Iowa Libraries<\/a><\/p>\n

Duchamp called such objects \u201creadymades,\u201d a term historians believe he first used in a letter to his sister Suzanne<\/a> dated Jan. 15, 1916. His first so-called readymade was \u201cBicycle Wheel\u201d (1913), which joined an inverted bicycle wheel to a wooden stool. The lost original survives through replicas, including an authorized version from 1964 that\u2019s held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. <\/p>\n

\u201cBicycle Wheel\u201d proposed that art doesn\u2019t have to be handmade. An object can become art because the artist selects it and invites us to think about it differently.<\/p>\n

\"Sculpture<\/p>\n

What makes something art? Several of Duchamp\u2019s works use ordinary objects to ask viewers that question.
\n Felix H\u00f6rhager\/Picture Alliance via Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

Making the viewer part of the art<\/p>\n

Duchamp studied at the Acad\u00e9mie Julian in Paris and was fully capable of traditional drawing and painting. He arrived at the readymades not because he lacked technical ability, but because he prioritized art that engaged the mind over what he called \u201cretinal art<\/a>,\u201d art that primarily pleased the eye.<\/p>\n

Seeing \u201cFountain\u201d in Philadelphia provides a key to two of the museum\u2019s other great Duchamp works: \u201cThe Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)<\/a>\u201d and \u201c\u00c9tant donn\u00e9s<\/a>.\u201d The eroticism that \u201cFountain\u201d implied with its associations to bodily functions evolved into frustrated desire in \u201cThe Large Glass.\u201d In \u201c\u00c9tant donn\u00e9s,\u201d the eroticism becomes explicit and voyeuristic, as it asks viewers to peer through holes in a weathered door.<\/p>\n

Duchamp\u2019s nod to manufactured plumbing systems in \u201cFountain\u201d also anticipates his exploration of mechanical themes. In \u201cThe Large Glass,\u201d the nine bachelors form part of an elaborate mechanical apparatus<\/a>. In \u201c\u00c9tant donn\u00e9s,\u201d an electric motor inside a cookie tin rotates a perforated disc, creating the illusion of a moving waterfall.<\/p>\n

All three works shift art away from a self-contained image and toward an encounter involving object, idea, context, chance and viewer. \u201cFountain\u201d transforms plumbing through the artist\u2019s selection. \u201cThe Large Glass\u201d incorporates chance through cracks created when it was shattered accidentally in transit \u2013 damage Duchamp repaired and embraced. \u201c\u00c9tant donn\u00e9s\u201d incorporates found materials, including an old wooden door Duchamp obtained in Cadaqu\u00e9s, the Catalonian village where he and his wife, Alexina \u201cTeeny\u201d Duchamp, spent their summers.<\/p>\n

Together, the works demonstrate that art can be a question to contemplate, a system to decipher, or an experience our actions complete. Seen together in Philadelphia, they reveal how consistently Duchamp made the viewer central to artistic meaning. <\/p>\n

\"Gold<\/p>\n

A fully functioning solid gold toilet made by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan recalls Marcel Duchamp\u2019s \u2018Fountain.\u2019
\n William Edwards\/AFP via Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s OK to laugh \u2013 or scowl<\/p>\n

Despite its philosophical seriousness, \u201cFountain\u201d is deliberately absurd and comical. It is appropriate to laugh. I\u2019ve seen viewers even get angry and irritated. Its irreverent humor, provocation and rejection of artistic convention place it within Dada, a movement that began at Zurich\u2019s Cabaret Voltaire<\/a> in 1916 as an absurdist protest against the nationalism and supposedly rational values that had led to World War I. Dada became an international movement active in Berlin, Paris and New York, and it transformed modern art.<\/p>\n

The legacy of the readymades, especially \u201cFountain,\u201d is difficult to overstate. They paved the way for Louise Nevelson, who transformed discarded pieces of wood into monumental assemblages<\/a>, and Andy Warhol, who elevated Campbell\u2019s soup cans<\/a> into icons of American culture. Maurizio Cattelan addressed Fountain directly in 2016 with \u201cAmerica<\/a>,\u201d a fully functioning toilet cast in 18-karat gold. <\/p>\n

Nearly a century later, Cattelan echoed Duchamp\u2019s questions about where artistic value resides: Is it in the object, its material, its price, its context, the artist\u2019s idea or the institution declaring it art?<\/p>\n

This leads to the great paradox of Duchamp\u2019s legacy. Art conceived to challenge permanence, originality and inherent value has itself become permanent, invaluable and iconic.<\/p>\n

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania<\/a>, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marcel Duchamp\u2019s \u201cFountain\u201d is not for everyone \u2013 and it does not need to be. But it does…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-765230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}