style="font-size:15px;"> by Her Bachelors, Even.” (It was also known as “TheLarge Glass.”)
22
While working on the “The Bride Stripped Bare . . . ,”
Duchamp also experimented with a new genre of
artwork he called the “readymade.” A readymade was an
ordinary mass-produced functional object, or a combina-
tion of such objects, bought from a store and minimally
modified. Sometimes Duchamp added nothing more
than a signature, a date, and a title. His first readymade
was actually created in Paris before he came to Ameri-
ca. It was a bicycle wheel mounted atop a wooden stool.
His first New York readymade was a snow shovel. He
suspended it from the ceiling of an art gallery and titled
it “In Advance of the Broken Arm.”
Two years later Duchamp fashioned what was to
become his most famous, or infamous, readymade.
It was an ordinary white porcelain urinal purchased at
a heating and plumbing supply showroom. Duchamp
added a date and signed it using the pseudonym
“R. Mutt.” (This was probably a play on the name of the
business where it was acquired, J. L. Mott Iron Works.)
He titled it “Fountain.”
23
Duchamp loved playing games, particularly word
games and games of strategy.4 In a very real sense, making art was a game for Duchamp. The readymades represented a move, not unlike a bold chess move, intended to advance his position in the game of art.
Duchamp played his game of art primarily in the
context of arts institutions. Around the same time
Duchamp created “Fountain” he also cofounded an
organization whose stated purpose was to exhibit any
and all works of art without judgment or restrictions. It
was named the Society of Independent Artists. Any
artist who paid a modest fee could enter an artwork in
one of its shows. In 1917 the Society mounted the
largest exhibition of modern art ever seen in the United
States until then. However, when the hanging commit-
tee reviewed “Fountain”—submitted by an unknown
artist named R. Mutt—the piece was determined to be
not really a work of art but merely a “functional object.”
Duchamp, not coincidentally, was a member of the
hanging committee. Without giving himself away, he
24
vigorously defended “Fountain” as an artwork, but the
other members wouldn’t budge. Duchamp understood
that institutions, even well-meaning arts institutions,
tend to be conservative no matter how liberal their
founding ideals. Duchamp kept at it, but when he
realized the futility of his protestations, he quit the
committee.
The rejection of “Fountain” undoubtedly triggered a
sense of déjà vu. Five years prior, in Paris, Duchamp
had tried to enter a painting titled “Nude Descending a
Staircase, No. 2” in an exhibition organized by the
Société des Artistes Indépendants. This salon exhibi-
tion was established in direct response to the rigid
traditionalism of the official government-sponsored
salon (an annual art exhibition). It was supposed to
embrace an artistically more enlightened point of view.
(At the time, getting one’s work accepted in a salon
show was the primary way French artists established
themselves as art-making professionals.) To
Duchamp’s dismay, the “progressive” organizers of this
25
“I have forced myself to contradict myself in order
to avoid conforming to my own taste.”
26
“. . . as soon as you get to the why, you deal with
‘Why not?’”
27
exhibition bristled at the title “Nude Descending. . . .”
They were also taken aback by the painting’s subject
matter. (Up until then nudes either sat or reclined, they
didn’t walk in Cubist stop-motion fashion down flights
of stairs!) The show’s organizers appealed to
Duchamp’s two older brothers, both established artists,
to “manage” their younger sibling. For the sake of
