Paper at the colloque international Le beau, L’utile, Le necessaire, dans le cadre du 300ème anniversaire de l’Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, 31.X.2012.
Abstract
When the readymade emerged as the central category of the art object during the late sixties, and thenceforth changed the production of art fundamentally, The Fountain became, retrospectively, the prime object of reference. Art production of today can’t be thought of without the notion of readymade deeply rooted in its very definition. It is thus curious, that the “unassisted readymade”, of which Fountain is the parameter, is totally absent -- or rather: invisible -- in the arts from the 60s and onwards. The reason for this is, we believe, with the readymade as a mode in the production of art, follows, with necessity, the concept of fake. This case-study of Fountain will try to make this point.When the american painter Douglas Gorsline in 1964 had bought a bottle dryer, he wrote to Duchamp to hear if he perchance would sign it for him, Duchamp answered: “In Milan I have just made a contract with Schwarz, authorizing him to make an edition of all my few readymades, including the porte bouteille. I have therefore pledged myself not to sign anymore readymades to protect this edition. But signature or no signature, your find has the same ‘metaphysical’ value as any other ready-made, [it] even has the advantage to have no commercial value.” Probably not what Gorsline would like to hear. The question for us must nevertheless be, what does this ”metaphysical value,” Duchamp is refering to, consist of?
I.
The most fascinating fact about Fountain is the almost total absence of any critical reception from May the 5th 1917 until it started to reappear after the Second World War. Stieglitz’ photograph was first reproduced in an article by Harriet and Sidney Janis in the Duchamp issue of View 1945. Five years later, Sidney Janis asked Duchamp if he could buy an urinoir for his Duchamp-exhibition the next year, which he could, and he installed it, not 90 degrees tipped as on the Stieglitz photograph, but ‘correctly’, albeit rather close to the floor, “so that little boys could use it”, as Duchamp later commented the installation.From 1959 onwards, with Robert Lebels monograph, the Stieglitz’ photograph starts to be reproduced on a regularly basis. In 1963, I believe without asking Duchamp for permission, Ulf Linde bought a used urinal from a restaurant in Stockholm for the Duchamp exhibition at Galerie Burén in 1963, placed it, and signed it in accordance with the Stieglitz photograph. This urinal was exhibited in Milan the following year, and Duchamp not only confirms the replica with his (and R. Mutt’s) signature, but also pays tribute to the design by introducing the four flush holes from the Stockholm replica, not in the Stieglitz original, into the design of his and Arturo Schwarz edition from 1964, effectively making it to an “object-collage”.
If the happy finds of Sidney Janis’ at a flea market and Ulf Linde’s at a restaurant is in accordance with the idea of the readymade, Arturo Schwarz’ and Duchamp’s edition is from the beginning to the end a product of perfect traditional handicraft, and not even a replica, as the product differ considerably from the ‘original’ urinoir photographed by Stieglitz.
By 2004, Fountain had raised to the most influential art work of the century, which in itself was not surprising, as any bibliometrical study would have yielded the same result. This has not, however, dramatically altered the economical value of the edition of 1964, which would sell for something well off 1 million dollars, but this sum is still only a fraction of what one would expect for “the most influential piece of the 20th century”. That is, of course, because “the most influential piece of the 20th century” is not a piece of porcelain signed by Marcel Duchamp, but because the “unassisted readymade” is the most influential idea of the 20th century.
II.
The Schwarz edition is an articulation of this idea, but the most pregnant articulation of this idea was made the very same year by Andy Warhol with his exhibition of seven types of commercial cardboard boxes at the Stable Gallery. The production method of Warhol’s box sculptures are strikingly similar to the one employed by Duchamp and Schwarz. Warhol’s sculptures are not on cardboard, but on plywood, the motif is not printed, but silkscreened, the motive is only reproduced on the five visible sides, and the objects are serially produced by craft in a small production studio (The Factory).Even though not readymades at all, they nevertheless effectivelly evoke this distinctive ‘readymade feeling’, a certain conceptually evading, but at the same time precise, aura of commodity, seriality, and banality. In my opinion, it is not only logical, but rather inevitable, that this piece--or rather: the production method of this piece--recently became a disturbing case of art forgery. It started to happen when Pontus Hultén, then director for Moderna Museet in Stockholm, in 1968 staged one of the earliest Warhol retrospectives in Europe. Instead of shipping the original boxes to Stockholm, Warhol agreed that replica boxes where not produced, but bought readymade from the Brillo factory. Thus, exhibited in Stockholm was 500 offset-printed cardboard boxes printed on all six sides. As with every exhibited readymade in the history of art, these cardboard boxes was discarded after the exhibition.
When Hultén organized the travelling exhibition Territoire de l’Art, in 1990, it included some 100 silkscreen wooden Brillo boxes, said to have been part of the Stockholm exhibition of 1968. From the mid-1990s onward, some of these boxes begun to appear on the art market, with a certificate from Andy Warhol Authentication Board that these boxes were produced under Andy Warhols supervision for the Stockholm exhibition in 1968, and catching higher and higher prices, until it in 2007 turned out that all these boxes were in fact produced by art students in Malmö in 1990.
The Hultén fakes were perfectly produced replicas of Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, with the very same feeling of commodity, seriality, and banality, but, technically and economically speaking, modern fakes. The true readymades from 1968, were, as Duchamp’s original readymades from the beginning of the century, discarded as rubbish. This, I believe, is no coincident, but intrinstically linked with the very concept of the readymade.
Warhol’s exhibition at Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery in 1964 was undoubtedly his breakthrough as the most important post-war artist, but later that year, and before he moved on to Leo Castelli Gallery, he participated in a now largely forgotten group exhibition organized by Ben Berillo, the “American Supermarket Exhibition”. As most artists at the exhibition, Warhol participated with different types of works, some boxes, some silkscreens, and, which I find extremely intriguing, signed Campbell’s soup cans which were sold for $6 a piece (Incidentally, the very same price which R. Mutt would pay for his piece). This singed soup cans were exactly “an ordinary object, elevated to the status of art, by the mere choosing of the artist”, the very definition of an “unassisted readymade”, and probably the very first unassisted readymade in the history of art since Duchamp’s Fountain.
The work? No known copy exist. I have found some doubtful rumours of “later copies” on the net, but the work has never been on the market, never exhibited since, is not included in the catalogue raisonné, and totally absent from the literature in general. The unassisted readymade, the very legacy of Duchamp, which Warhol had revitalised in a popart context, does not exist, neither physically nor theoretically.
III.
The most conspicious feature with the photograph published in The Blind Man no. 2 is its multiple inscriptions. It is ‘signed’ five times. Two signings above the photograph: “Fountain by R. Mutt” and “Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz”, one inscription below the photograph: “The Exhibit Refused by the Independents”, and to singnings in the photograph: “R. Mutt” written on the urinal and the conspiciously propulsed indentification card, written in Duchamp’s hand. I believe it can be proved that all these five inscriptions are deliberate added to produce a document forgery.First, the identification card. Why would Stieglitz photograph an art object--as a “Buddha” or a “Madonna”--with its delivery card hanging so conspiciously and at the same time carelessly? This is not the way anyone has photographed art works, except for the FBI. As if it wants to prove that it was this very object that was delivered at the Grand Central Palace. The inclusion of the identification card in the photographic image can only be because we could doubt that it was this very object that was delivered, which I believe we should. As the object is not included in the first catalogue, it means that the object had not been registred before the deadline March 28, and thus the artist would not have received any identification card. Nor is it included in the supplement catalogue. Duchamp himself could of course acquire any number of blank identification cards, being chairman of the hanging committée at the time, and he could of course easily produce such an identification card if there wasn’t any such thing as identification card attached to the works (which I believe was the case).
Secondly, the signature “R. Mutt” is certainly not written on the object, but on a photographic print or a negative. This is obvious when one compare the signature with the signatures on the Sidney Janis, Ulf Linde, and Arturo Schwarz replicas. On all of them we se that the writing follows the forms of the object. In the Stieglitz photograph this is not the case, nor does the perspective of the letters correspond to the perspective of the object. Apparent as well is the discrepancy in scale between the letters and the object. The scale of the letters does, however, correspond perfectly to an inscription on a print or on a negative.
Thirdly, the inscription below, “The exhibit refused by the Independents,” places the object in a artistic logic, which was of considerable importance for Duchamp. When his Nude ... was refused by the Independents in Paris during the spring 1912, to become the main attraction of Armory Show the year after, it was a duplication of the modality of the avantgarde since the rejection of Courbet at the World Exhibition in 1855 and the rejection of Manet’s Dejeuner ... in 1863. And, as Thierry De Duve convincingly has demonstrated in an algebraic fashion, this is the very logic Fountain reproduces: for to be a sensation-scandal piece, it has first to be rejected, for then to be exhibited in a new exhibition of the refusées. Duchamp himself elaborated this theme in a letter to his sister, saying that he wanted to make an “exhibition of the rejects from the Independents but that would have been a pleonasm and the urinal would be lonely”. This inscription, together with the publication of “The Richard Mutt Case” in the second issue of The Blind Man constitutes this exhibition of the rejects. This means: already before anything had started, Duchamp knew, that the urinal had to be refused. If not, the whole thing would be meaningless. No chances could be taken. No contingencies could be trusted. It had to be refused with necessity.
Now, within 3 days, about 2,500 works were delivered, of which the majority was of very low quality and some pieces in a similar vein as the Fountain, for instance Raymond Duchamp-Villon’s piece, “a cheap electric bell, together with some length of wire, glued to a piece of common wall board”. As we know, there was no jury, and this principle was heavily emphasized in the contemporary press as mirroring American political democracy, for which the United States had declared war against Germany the 4th of April that year. If Duchamp, or his “female friend,” truly had delivered this urinal, the chances that it would have been not rejected, was very large indeed. This means, that Duchamp & Co. had to produce a rejection, without actually deliver the object, and this--I believe--explains the conflicting stories of the events at Grand Central Palace. When, for instance, Katherine Dreier writes that she voted “no”, it is at the same time clear, that she had not seen the object, “the piece of plumbing which was surreptitiously stolen”. It is also clear from her letter to Duchamp, that no meeting was called upon, as reported in the newspapers at the time. And with no meeting, there could be no calculation of the votes, and any result of such a ‘voting’ would be a rigged voting.
The second signature, “Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz”, seem indisputable, as Stieglitz confirms in letters to Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry McBride respectively that he has photographed the “Fountain”. Yet, we really do not know what Stieglitz has photographed. Only two prints Fountain exists today, and both stems from Duchamp’s estate. No print and no negative are ever recorded among the estate of Stieglitz. Furthermore, the curator of photography at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Martha Chahroudi, concludes that “it is on photographic stock consistent with the period but not really consistent with Stieglitz’ photographs.” This fact, combined with the fact that the only surviving material evidence of this photograph stems from Duchamp, ought to cause some red lights to blink.
The signature above the photograph, “Fountain by R. Mutt,” implies that this is a photograph of a work, an object. The many attempts to identify this object has all failed. No urinoir of the Fountain type seem to have existed, the closest being Trenton & Co.’s “Flatback ‘Bedfordshire’ Urinal with Lip”. Rhonda Roland Shearer has convincingly argued that the picture is made up from several photographs from different angles, as is, by the way, all photographs of Duchamp’s early readymades. Without noting it, Elaine Sturtevant came to illustrate this in her remaking of Duchamp’s Fountain in 1974. Sturtevant approched her task--like a forger--setting herself in the artists mind, and meticiously reproducing the method used by the copied work. As Sturtevant thought the Fountain was a bought object, she bought the closest possible and photographed it in the very same angle as the lower part of the photograph. The distorsion of the upper part is obvious. The upper part of Stieglitz’ photograph is photographed from above, the lower part from the same height. We also note, that whereas the lower part is turned in an angle of 5,6° off the z-axis, the upper part is only turning at a degree of 2,4°, giving this impression of decoherence between the frontal view of the upper part, and the turning of the lower.
But we do not necessarily have to fall back on tedious measurings and 3-dimensional modellings, the evidence is given by the conspirators themselves. In the same spread of The Blind Man, where we see the photograph on the left and the “Richard Mutt Case”-article on the right, the statement of the image contradicts by the statement of the text: “Without discussion this article disappeared and was never exhibited.”
IV.
All this confusion--I believe--is because we have inherited André Bretons defintion of the readymade, as “an object elevated to the status of art by the mere choosing of the artist”. Judging from Duchamps early readymades, the objects themselves had no importance whatsoever. They were mere apparatuses for the projection of immaterial images, cast shadows, and as such means for an end. When they had fulfilled their purpose, they were discarded as rubbish. The readymade, seen from this perspective--and, as we see from the case of Richard Mutt--is rather a genre of photography in an expanded field.The readymade, as such, is always absent and invisible, and can only be made visible or re-appear in an act of reproduction or replication. The point is, regardless how it is reproduced or replicated, it will be as a fake. The metaphysical value is exactly--as Duchamp wrote to Gorsline--it’s impossibility to be a commodity or collectible. Even though the appearance of Gorsline’s bottledryer is as much a fake, as any other re-appearance, Gorsline’s had the advantage of being unsigned, prevented it of having any commercial value.
Thus, any production of readymade, as a physical object, is--with necessity--the production of a fake. It will always have the same degree of authenticity as the signing of a wall painting in a New York restaurant “as a readymade”. Even though the action is authentic, the relation between the object and the signature, will always, per definition, be a fake. This--I believe--is the lesson to be learned by the Richard Mutt case.
Jan Bäcklund