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Marcel Duchamp, Readymade


"Asked to submit something for display in 1917, Duchamp sent a urinal. ...Duchamp reflected on the history of art and decided to make a statement. The artist is not a great creator - Duchamp went shopping at a plumbing store. The artwork is not a special object - it was mass-produced in a factory. The experience of art is not exciting and ennobling - at best it is puzzling and mostly leaves one with a sense of distaste. But over and above that, Duchamp did not select just any ready-made object to display. In selecting the urinal, his message was clear: Art is something you piss on".
Here is what Duchamp wrote about this:

The Richard Mutt Case: Anonymous article in The Blind Man # 2, May 1917.
Written by Beatrice Wood, H.P. Roché and/or Marcel Duchamp.

They say any artist paying six dollars may exhibit.
Mr. Richard Mutt sent in a fountain. Without discussion this article disappeared and was never exhibited.
What were the grounds for refusing Mr. Mutt's fountain:
1. Some contend it was immoral, vulgar.
2. Others, it was plagiarism, a plain piece of plumbing.
Now Mr. Mutt's 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 a new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.
As for plumbing, that is absurd. The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.


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