Should I Travel 30 Blocks to See A Famous Urinal?
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain I am finalizing our plans for a trip to New York. When I told Joe and my sister-in-law, Janice, that Marcel Duchamp’s groundbreaking work, Fountain , was on exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), they were having none of it. Duchamp in front of Fountain For those unfamiliar with the Dadaist object, it was a ready-made urinal that the French-American artist acquired from a hardware showroom in 1917 for the Society of Independent Artists' inaugural exhibition in New York. Recently, a New York Times critic argued that Duchamp edges out Picasso as the most influential modern artist. Fountain is a succès de scandale and the kind of work that gives modern art a bad name. Even after a century, the ready-made sculpture remains the most provocative work in the MoMA retrospective. Fountain has raised endless questions about the nature of art, taste, censorship, and authorship. It is signed with the pseudonym “R. Mutt.” The directors of the 1917 exhibitio...
