Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

A conversation between Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker in front of:

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917/1964, porcelain urinal, paint, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Steven: We're at SF MOMA

and we're looking at Marcel Duchamp's

Fountain, which he originally made in

1917, but which he remade in 1964.

Beth: The original is gone.

Steven: Thrown away or who knows what.

Beth: So this is a small series that

was made in 1964,

after that original work in 1917.

And he over saw the making of this series.

Steven: I think we need to be really careful

with the word "making."

Beth: [laugh]

Steven:What Duchamp did for us was go

to a plumbing supply house called Mott's

and purchased this and...

Beth: He didn't make it

Steven: He made it as a work of art

through the alchemy of the artist

he transformed this.

Beth: he turned the urinal on it's side

and signed it R. Mutt and dated it.

Steven: And submitted it to an art

exhibition for a new group that he was a

founding member of

The American Society for Independent Artists

And their notion was that the juried exhibition

that was prevalent in the United States

and New York at this time.

Remeber, Duchamp had just come over from Paris

and was in fact a real problem because

the jury always selected the traditional

work they were associated with and

this new group wanted to bring in new possibilities.

Beth: Right, so they were supposed to accept every

work that was submitted, but they

rejected this one.

Steven: I think he was really pushing the boundaries.

Beth: He submitted it as sculpture,

which to me is even more remarkable,

because when you think about sculpture it

has an even more monumental, heroic

Steven: Grand tradition.

Beth: Tradition, then even than painting.

To take this urinal and turn it on it's side.

Steven: Some art historians have dealt

with this in the most absurd way

talking about it's formal qualities with it's shine

Beth: Curves

Steven: Porcelain surface.

But it's a urinal, although it is transformed

And this is what Duchamp called a readymade.

Beth: You used the word "alchemy" before

and I think that that's an interesting word

because one of the ways that we can think about

art is a kind transformation of ordinary materials

into something really wonderful, that transports

us, and makes us see things in a new

way, even though he didn't make anything

he is asking us to see the urinal in a new way

not necessarily, as an aesthetic object

but to make us ask those philisophical

questions about what art is

and what the artist does.

Steven: He separates craftsmanship and

it's relationship to the aesthetic

enjoyment and to the profundity

of a work of art.

Just throwing it out the window.

Beth: That's the philosophical question

he wants to open up, does art

have to be made by the hand of the artist?

Steven: Of course, he's doing it in the

most absurd way by putting a urinal

forward and calling it Fountain.

Beth: So, what is art?

Is it the idea? Is it the concept?

Can the artist just have the idea

and not make the object?

Steven: Can art be pure philosophy,

pure theory?

Beth: Exactly.