Marcel
Duchamp 1887 – 1968
“I
don’t believe in art. I believe in artists”
Said
Marcel Duchamp or R. Mutt 1917 who used the latter
pseudonym and signature for his infamous and iconic dada inspired art work, Fountain.
The ‘readymade’ artwork consisted of a standard urinal purchased from a
sanitary ware supplier that Duchamp anonymously presented as an art work to the
Society of Independent Artists in 1917. They rejected it, dismissing it as an
object unworthy of being called ‘art’. Others disagreed:
“Mr
Mutt’s fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bathtub is
immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers’ shop windows.
Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain has no importance. He
CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful
significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new
thought for that object.”
(Anon.,
‘The Richard Mutt Case’, Blind Man, New York, no.2, May 1917, p.5)
The
urinal was later lost although photographs and a replica remain.
Marcel
Duchamp, full name Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp, had previously experimented
with readymades, most notably, Bicycle Wheel (1913), Pharmacy
(1914) and In Advance of the Broken Arm (A snow shovel, 1915). He chose
these and other readymade objects “based on a reaction of visual indifference,
with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste…”
Throughout
his career he also created figure paintings, experimented with cubism, futurism
and surrealism, drew cartoons, sculpted, wrote, and played chess, amongst other
artistic pursuits. He was unconstrained, doing as he pleased in pursuit of the
art and life he believed in. Duchamp would maintain a strong interest in the ‘art
of the mind’ until his death in 1968.
Sources:
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