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 exhibition had the “bathroom fixture” removed, prompting Duchamp to resign from the board and seek damages.

Duchamp would have the last laugh. He reproduced the work in an edition of eight in 1964, and copies entered the permanent collections of many major museums, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (where I first saw it) and the Tate Modern in London (where I saw it again).

Fountain became one of the 20th century's most influential works of art, an avant-garde masterpiece. Many other 20th- and 21st-century artists, from Andy Warhol to Robert Rauschenberg, were influenced by Duchamp. 

Maurizio Cattelan, "America"
Installation view

In 2016, the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan produced America, a fully functional 18-karat gold toilet that was an homage to Duchamp's earlier work and a jab at Trump. According to the Guggenheim website, "the gold toilet—a cipher for the excesses of affluence—was available for all to use in the privacy of one of the  Guggenheim’s single-stall, gender-neutral bathrooms. More than one hundred thousand people waited patiently in line for the opportunity to commune with art and with nature."

Moreover, various performance artists, including Brian Eno, have used Duchamp's Fountain for the purpose for which it was originally intended over the years.

That brings me back to Joe, Janice, and questions of taste and beauty. Janice told me to go see something beautiful on our trip and said I could see a similar work for free the next time I’m in a public restroom. 

Joe is always a good sport, and I’m sure he’ll tag along if I decide to see the MoMA retrospective. I’m leaning toward not going, mostly because of competing priorities rather than taste or aesthetics. 

So, is Fountain art? For me, the answer is "yes." Hell yes. Offering an object is an artistic choice. Where does it say the artist must make the object? Who makes the rules? And do satire and humor have no role in art?

Fountain needs to be understood in the context of the Dada movement, which was anti-war and anti-art and mocked conventional bourgeois aesthetics. That it still stirs passionate debate is beautiful in itself.

It would be a poorer world indeed if art were always required to conform to common perceptions of “beauty,” whatever they may be. 

Here, beauty is in the toilet.

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