Fountain. One may think of Rome’s Fontana di Trevi or even the ceramic fountain in the local shopping center where shoppers wish upon with pennies. Certainly, one does not think of a urinal, a white porcelain bowl into which men urinate. Which Fountain is. It also happens to be art.
Fountain heaved the art world. To say it was a mystery would be to oversimplify it. First, there was the signature, R. Mutt, possibly referring to the Mott Works where the urinal was manufactured, or to Mutt and Jeff from a cartoon strip to provide a comical undertone, or R for Richard, a slang for the rich
. But unfortunately, there was nothing mysterious about what it was. While today, Richard Princes Instagram snapshots of celebrities can easily be rendered art, such was not the case in the early 20th century. Art, for the most part, was Monet and Degas. Even Fauvism, with its non-representational color, or Cubism, which distorted ordinary visions, startled yet succeeded in only stretching the boundaries of art. Fountain, on the other hand, was revolutionary; it implied that a toothpaste, a knife, an orange, and furthermore, anything could be art.
Perhaps the value of Fountain belongs more to the questions it raises than to the object itself. After all, the zeitgeist of the time was disorder given the tragic chaos of WWI. With the advent of industrialized weapons, the world witnessed for the first time what modernity was capable of: 37 million deaths. Such senselessness called into question morality, principles, and beliefs many had held sacred. Dadaism, an avant-garde movement prompted by the violence of the war, attempted to surpass sorrowful reflections of tragedy. Rather, they reacted by repulsing just as the war had repulsed them. They adopted an “in your face” attitude that sought to provoke. Art was no longer paintings of landscapes and sculptures of perfect men. It was a urinal.
A urinal, by its essence, disgusts and uneases. But if a viewer were patient enough to move beyond the initial repulsion, she would be overcome with questions: why do I feel so uncomfortable? Why am I offended? What is it trying to tell me? Thankfully not only to Duchamp and the art world, but also to the rest of the world, enough people were willing to pause and consider how an ordinary object could be more than what its name implies. In other words, they could imagine the potential of all things beyond their names, shapes, and functions.
Today, Fountain is mostly recognized for being the harbinger of Dadaism, but surely Duchamp didn’t intend his work to be explained inside the pages of a textbook. For me, the work is a challenge to constantly reassess reality, to personalize the objective. We live in a world of categories, labels, and responsibilities. Fountain is a reminder that the meanings of things – be it love or a chair – extend beyond what we see, hear, smell, feel, and taste. With a slight difference in perception or context, one can reclaim, rename, redefine, re-present what we believe to know perfectly well. Just so, our change in perception can give us the power to see not just an object, but a person, experience, and even ourselves, differently. After all, no one can be sure of anything in a world of infinite possibilities, the kind that the 20th century witnessed, the kind that we continue to witness today. All we have, then, is our imagination, which breeds novel interpretations and perspectives, which gives us the power to see the world time and time again as “tabula rasa” and venture into new possibilities.
-Jung
It's Really Not Rocket Science 