Displayed at
Centre Pompidou
The Musée national d'art moderne holds one of the 1964 Schwarz-edition replicas; the 1917 original is lost. Off view while the building is closed for renovation, 2025–2030.
Sculpture
Fountain
A mass-produced porcelain urinal, turned on its back, signed “R. Mutt 1917,” and submitted to an open New York exhibition that refused to show it. The lost original survives through Alfred Stieglitz's photograph and later replicas authorized by Duchamp.
- 1917
- Readymade: porcelain urinal
About Marcel Duchamp
What it is
A standard porcelain urinal lies on its back rather than hanging in its normal plumbing position. The inscription “R. Mutt 1917” runs across one side. Duchamp selected the object, changed its orientation, titled it Fountain, and submitted it as sculpture.
Those actions are materially slight but conceptually exact. Turning the fixture makes its curves and openings newly visible, while the title redirects a receptacle for waste toward an object that gives water. The work asks whether selection, naming, and presentation can constitute artistic making.
The exhibition that refused it
Fountain was submitted to the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York in April 1917. The Society announced that any artist who paid the entry fee could exhibit, without a jury selecting works. Its board nevertheless withheld the urinal from view. Duchamp, who belonged to the board, resigned.
The refusal revealed the limit inside the supposedly open policy. An ordinary fixture could enter the building and satisfy the fee requirement, yet the organizers still decided it was not art. That institutional decision became part of the work's history.
R. Mutt and the authorship question
Duchamp did not submit the object under his own name. “R. Mutt” has often been connected to J. L. Mott Iron Works, the plumbing supplier associated with the purchase, and to the Mutt and Jeff comic strip. The pseudonym prevented Duchamp's reputation from deciding the entry in advance.
The attribution to Duchamp has also been challenged. Some scholars argue that the Dada artist and poet Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven may have supplied or originated the object, citing a letter in which Duchamp referred to a female friend. Others find that evidence insufficient and retain Duchamp's authorship. The dispute is significant, particularly because women in Dada were often marginalized, but it is not resolved.
The photograph and the defense
After the rejection, Alfred Stieglitz photographed the urinal in his gallery against a painting by Marsden Hartley. The image gives the fixture dramatic lighting and a sculptural presence. Because the original soon disappeared, this photograph became the principal visual record of the 1917 object.
The second issue of the Dada magazine The Blind Man published the photograph with an unsigned defense usually known as “The Richard Mutt Case.” Its central argument was that the object acquired new thought through the artist's choice and new point of view. The controversy therefore circulated through photography and print rather than through direct encounter with the lost object.
The readymade
Duchamp had already been selecting manufactured objects and calling them readymades. Fountain made that procedure public and confrontational. It removed manual skill, uniqueness, and conventional beauty from the minimum definition of an artwork.
That does not mean every urinal automatically became art. The work depends on a chain of choices: which object, how it was oriented, what it was called, how it was signed, where it was submitted, and how the refusal was documented. The readymade shifted attention from fabrication alone to authorship, context, and judgment.
A lost original and several authorized versions
The 1917 urinal disappeared. Duchamp later authorized replicas, beginning with a full-scale version made for Sidney Janis's 1950 exhibition in New York and followed by other examples, including the 1964 edition produced by Arturo Schwarz in Milan.
The replicas preserve an idea without reproducing the exact industrial model. Their existence makes the problem of originality especially clear: museums hold objects sanctioned by Duchamp, while the most influential evidence for the first Fountain remains Stieglitz's photograph.
Why Fountain matters
Fountain changed the terms on which art could be argued about. It made the artist's designation and the institution's response visible parts of the work, and it treated reproduction as capable of carrying an absent object. Later conceptual, installation, and appropriation practices repeatedly returned to those questions.
Its importance does not require agreement that the object is beautiful or that Duchamp alone conceived it. The unresolved authorship debate, the rejection, the missing original, and the authorized replicas all reinforce the central issue: artistic status is produced through choices, claims, records, and institutions as well as through physical manufacture.
Timeline
1917
Submitted as “Fountain” under the name “R. Mutt” to the Society of Independent Artists in New York, and rejected by the hanging committee even though the show had promised to accept every entry.
1917
Photographed by Alfred Stieglitz and defended in The Blind Man. The original disappeared soon afterward.
1950
Duchamp authorized the first replica, for a New York exhibition, as interest in the readymade revived.
1964
An edition of museum replicas was issued through Galleria Schwarz in Milan, the versions most museums show today.
Frequently asked questions
What is Fountain?
A porcelain urinal submitted under the name “R. Mutt” to a New York exhibition in 1917. It is the best-known readymade: a manufactured object designated and presented as art through selection, orientation, title, signature, and context.
Did Duchamp make the urinal himself?
No. A mass-produced urinal was purchased, turned on its back, signed, titled, and submitted. The readymade shifts artistic agency from fabrication alone to selection, framing, and designation.
What happened to the original Fountain?
It was lost soon after 1917. Alfred Stieglitz's photograph is the main record of it. The examples in museums today are replicas Duchamp authorized decades later.
Who was R. Mutt?
The pseudonym on the urinal. It is commonly connected to J. L. Mott Iron Works and the Mutt and Jeff comic strip, though its precise formation is not fully settled. It kept Duchamp's known name off the submission.
Did Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven really make it?
It remains contested. Some scholars argue that the Dada poet and artist supplied or originated the urinal. Others find the documentary evidence insufficient. We record the challenge because it matters, but do not present it as a settled correction.
Why was Fountain rejected from a supposedly open exhibition?
The Society of Independent Artists promised to exhibit any work whose maker paid the fee, but its board withheld Fountain because members did not accept the urinal as art. The contradiction exposed an institutional judgment inside a no-jury policy.
Why is Alfred Stieglitz's photograph important?
The original disappeared soon after the controversy, so Stieglitz's 1917 photograph became its principal visual record. It also helped turn the rejected object into a widely circulated argument through The Blind Man magazine.
Where can you see it now?
In the authorized replicas held by museums including Tate, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou. No original survives.
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