Is it Art or a Joke?

The Fountain (1917), a "readymade" sculpture

Last night I bought a book called What Are You Looking At? by Will Gompertz.  Gompertz is a BBC Arts Editor, prior director at the Tate Gallery, and probably the world's first art history stand-up comedian.  His deep interest in modern art is what grounds the base of this book; however, it is written in a non-pretentious way that will give us the knowledge to decide whether we think a particular piece of art is good.  A couple chapters in and I'm already laughing.

One of his first stories tells us about the history of how Marcel Duchamp's famous "readymade" sculpture The Fountain came into existence.  You know, it's that sculpture which is in fact a urinal that has been laid on its back.  The gist of it is that Duchamp and two of his friends walked into a plumbing store in New York and bought this urinal.  Although his friends laughed at the thought, Duchamp was nothing but thought.  After he brought the piece back to his studio, he painted the disguise R. Mutt 1917 (as opposed to his real name) onto it.  His intent was to enter it into the 1917 Independents Exhibition (America's largest modern art show), which was organized by the Society of Independent Artists ("a group of free-thinking, forward-looking intellectuals who were making a stand against what they perceived to be the National Academy of Design's conservative and stifling attitude to modern art").  However, long story short, even these "free-thinkers" thought it was too much of a stretch to exhibit what was in essence — a urinal.  They did not exhibit the sculpture and we do not know what happened to it, to this day.  Yet, there are 15 copies being exhibited in galleries and museums today.

However, the point that Duchamp wanted to make was that if you were an artist and you paid money to be a member of the Society of Independent Artists then your work should be exhibited.  I like what Gompertz says when he writes "the conservatives won the battle, but as we now know, spectacularly lost the war."  Although Duchamp's (or I should say, R. Mutt's) piece was seen as too offensive to the board, it has become revered to this day.  Who would of thought? A urinal.  The overall concept of this fountain influenced many art movements, which includes Dadaism, Surrealism, Expressionism, Pop Art, and Conceptualism.  I'm not going to tell you whether to believe that this story is bunk or pure genius, but I highly recommend checking out this book of Gompertz'.  He has some pretty insightful (and comedic) views on the whole thing.