Fountain

Marcel Duchamp, 1917

Okay, so this is the urinal they wouldn't let into a show that was supposed to let everybody in. Grand Central Palace, New York. 1917. They're putting up more than two thousand artworks, all in alphabetical order. And the directors are sitting in a meeting, arguing about a urinal. It's on a pedestal. The fee's been paid. It's signed R. Mutt. Some of them say it's indecent. The others say, hold on. We promised no jury, no prizes. You pay the fee, you're in. So they vote. Now, officially, they never reject it. They just put it behind a partition. One of the directors quits over this. His name is... Marcel Duchamp. So you're probably thinking... who sent it in? We'll get to that. First, look at the thing. It's a men's room urinal, lying on its back. And there on the rim, in black paint: "R. Mutt, 1917." Duchamp said later that he wanted the object with "the least chance of being liked." Then he and some friends put out this little magazine. They print Alfred Stieglitz's photograph of the thing. The only picture of the original, and next to it, an unsigned editorial. Whether Mr. Mutt made it with his own hands, it says, "has no importance. He chose it." And then, in the same editorial: "The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges." In 2004, a poll asks five hundred art experts to name the most influential modern artwork. Guess what wins? Picasso comes in second. But go back to that name on the rim. The day after the show opens, Duchamp writes to his sister. He says "one of my female friends" sent in a urinal under a man's name. He never says who. The papers had Mr. Mutt down as some guy in Philadelphia. Some say it was the Baroness Elsa, a Dada artist who was living in Philly that year. Nobody's settled it. So that name, the one thing painted on the thing, might not even be his. And the original? Gone... To be honest, it's kind of crazy how many of this guy's things get lost. Anyways, in 1950, a gallery wants to show it. So Duchamp has the dealer buy a used one in Paris, and he paints the R. Mutt on it himself. By 1964, there's an edition of eight. That's what the museums have. But back in 1917, just a couple of weeks after the show opens, Stieglitz writes to a friend about his photograph. Everyone who's seen it, he says, thinks it's beautiful. "A cross between a Buddha and a veiled woman."

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