What more can possibly be said about Marcel Duchampās Fountain? The upturned urinal, recently voted the most influential work of art of the twentieth century,1 remains one of the most widely discussed and closely examined objects in art history. Over the course of the past one hundred years, it has provoked an ever-accumulating mass of critical responses, a swirling current of literature which has driven what Rosalind Krauss calls the āseemingly endless streamā of writings on Duchamp (Krauss, 1984, p. 199). As we mark the centenary of āThe Richard Mutt Case ,ā there seems to be very little light left to be shed on Duchampās most famous work; when it comes to Mr. Mutt, the case would appear to be well and truly closed.2
It perhaps comes as no surprise, then, that the celebrations surrounding Fountainās one-hundredth anniversary have been somewhat subdued. Although institutions such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Centre George Pompidou have staged exhibitions to mark the occasion, on the whole, the broader community of Duchamp scholars remain curiously reticent. As Bernard GĆ©niĆØs writes, Fountainās centenary has provoked āni fanfare ni flonflonsā (GĆ©niĆØs, 2017, p. 88).3 Where one would expect to hear a loud chorus of voices, we are instead met by a wall of eerie, almost deafening, silence. Against such a backdrop, however, Duchampās voice begins to echo. āThe danger,ā he once said, āis in pleasing an immediate public; the immediate public that comes around you and takes you in and accepts you and gives you success and everything. Instead of that, you should wait for fifty years or a hundred years for your true public. That is the only public that interests meā (Duchamp, 1973a, p. 133). Duchamp, here, makes it unequivocally clear that he is addressing a specific viewer, one that would not emerge until a hundred years after his workās initial reception. Such a remark adds a heightened sense of critical urgency to the Fountain centenary, transforming 2017 into a pivotal moment in the reassessment of Duchampās oeuvre and a vital historical juncture in Duchamp scholarship . Taking Duchamp at his word, might it be possible that the ātrue public ā for whom he was waiting is only now appearing, one hundred years after the fact?
The cacophony of voices which has, for so long, circulated around Fountain now appears to render the silence accompanying its centenary all the more unsettling. Nevertheless, this strange atmosphere still feels oddly familiar. Indeed, one is reminded of the ānear total silenceā that met Duchampās final work, Ćtant donnĆ©s: 1Ā° la chute dāeau /2Ā° le gaz dāĆ©clairage. As Benjamin Buchloh argues, the reluctance of scholars to engage with what was a perplexing enigma has only served to further problematize Duchampās legacy by ensuring that his project has āfallen short of its actual historical potential.ā Could it be, he asks, that Ćtant donnĆ©s provides a ādeparture point for a new cycle of Duchamp Studies ,ā pointing the way out of the current cul-de-sac (Buchloh, 1996, p. 4)? This is the question I attempt to answer in this book. Like Fountainās centenary, the tentative reaction to Ćtant donnĆ©s was not without good cause: the discovery of the erotic āinstallationā after Duchampās death in 1968 came as a traumatic shock to the scholarly community from whom the project had been kept a secret for almost two decades.4 What disturbed the āmost dedicated Duchampians,ā Tomkins writes, was the fact that the new piece completely contradicted the accepted interpretation of Duchampās oeuvre by fundamentally undermining the criteria according to which it was understood; namely, the established set of ā conceptualā/āanti-retinalā principles which had, until that point, facilitated a smooth reading of his work. By positioning the viewer āin the grip of illusion,ā with forms that are āblatantly figurative,ā Ćtant donnĆ©s exploded the received verdict on Duchamp: the notion that, as the āFather of Conceptual Art,ā his aim was to lead us away from a focus on the purely retinal , towards a more intellectual form of artistic production (Tomkins, 1996, pp. 455ā456).
Faced with such an obstacle, critical reaction inevitably collided with a familiar wall of silence. The fact remains that the rapid expansion of literature on Duchamp during the decades after his death was impeded by the state of impotence and immobility imposed by Ćtant donnĆ©s, the only response to which was an active disregard for the workās significance. In effect, a project that Duchamp had dedicated the last twenty years of life to was all but ignored. The root cause of this reaction, of course, is the āinsurmountable deadlockā the work presents (Tomkins, 1996, p. 455), the fundamental question it poses: is this a work of art, an object worthy of scholarly attention and consideration alongside Duchampās other āmasterpiecesā or is it simply an act of provocation, a vulgar exercise in pornographic titillation? It is this same dilemma that we now see resurface in the silence surrounding Fountainās centenary. Through the lens of Ćtant donnĆ©s, the question first raised by āThe Richard Mutt Case ā in 1917 (āis this art?ā) appears to penetrate the scholarly consciousness with renewed force. As William Camfield argues in his thorough analysis of the historical reception of Fountain , the heated debate the work provoked has yet to be conclusively resolved:
For Camfield , our understanding of Fountain remains split between two diametrically opposing readings: while some still see it as a gesture of ā anti-art,ā others maintain that it is a work of ā conceptual art.ā āEven today,ā Thierry de Duve writes, āwe havenāt moved on from this dilemmaā (de Duve, 1996, p. 128). This lack of consensus has its source, Camfield argues, in a gaping ālacunae in knowledgeā at the heart of Fountainās reception , the fact that, despite the overwhelming quantity of material written about the work, fundamental inconsistencies and contradictions remain:Some deny that Fountain is art but believe it is significant for the history of art and aesthetics . Others accept it grudgingly as art but deny that it is significant. To complete the circle, some insist Fountain is neither art nor an object of historical consequence, while a few assert that it is both art and significantāthough for utterly incompatible reasons . (Camfield, 1989, p. 64)
Time, it would seem, is a vital component in understanding Fountain and the problems it raises. Today, in 2017, a number of significant obstacles have yet to be overcome, numerous facts that undermine the established interpretation and open up a series of unanswered questions. With no common agreement reached, and no definitive verdict declared, it is fair to assume that āThe Richard Mutt Case ā remains very much open for investigation. And there is undoubtedly no better moment to call for a reappraisal of the evidence then the workās centenary . How, then, can we hope to adopt the role of Duchampās ātrue public ā by looking at Fountain with fresh eyes? Is it even possible to add a meaningful contribution to the current mass of literature? Any attempt to add another piece to the pile would surely only increase the weight of the burden. That being said, new insights can often be arrived at not just by shedding light, but also by examining the light itself, from the perspective of the shadows it casts. By giving pause and listening to the silence, one comes to hear the noise in a new way. Instead of offering another particular assessment of the problem, is it possible to account for the nature of the problem itself, by reaching beneath the multitude of voices and articulating the deadlock to which they are all responding? Rather than getting caught up in the endless stream of writings on Duc...Duchampās Fountain has become one of the most famous/infamous objects in the history of modern art . The literature on itācounting references imbedded in broader considerations of Duchampās workāis staggering in quantity, and one might suppose that little more of consequence could be discovered. But an examination of this literature reveals that our knowledge of this readymade sculpture and its history is riddled with gaps and extraordinary conflicts of memory, interpretation, and criticism . (Camfield, 1989, p. 64)