One of the most interesting and ridiculous things in the reading this week is the discussion of Mardel Duchamp’s “Fountain”, which of course is just a urinal. I remember encountering this in Art History 101, and have always thought of it as more of a comedy than artistry. I also remember being told how another artist actually used the urinal, and thought this was absolutely brilliant. I’m not exactly sure why, but if buying a urinal and putting it in a gallery is art, than pissing in it surely must be art as well. This morning I thought I would do a little more digging to see who this genius was, and low and behold there are quite a few of them.

Brian Eno did it in 1990. French artist Pierre Pinoncelli urinated into the piece while it was on display in Nimes, France in 1993 and also attacked the piece in 2006 with a hammer. In 2000, a Chinese performance art duo Yuan Chai and Jian Jun Xi urinated on the work while in London. Well, not exactly on the piece, but on its acrylic case. Not to mention the various attempts and successes made on replicas. One of these “artists” was Swedish student Björn Kjelltoft, who stated that “I wanted to have a dialogue with Duchamp”.

As funny as it is, at least to me. It’s also a very insightful (on Duchamp’s part) to show that the identity of art is not found in its formal properties or principles of composition or media (Drucker page 11). Peeing in the piece is of course insightful in itself, but come on. It only needed to happen once for us to get it.

If there has ever been a piece of art that “spoke” to people this is it. How could you deny the agency of a piece of art that has convinced numerous people to pee on it in the face of high security and criminal charges.

However, I do wonder how radical a change Duchamp created. Where would we be if a curator decided that this piece would not be allowed into the show? For all the credit we give artists for pushing the boundaries, we must accept that human agency, relationships, power, social conventions and ideas create the milieu of what is deemed possible….or if we go back to Foucault, what is seeable and sayable.

The details of these events, including pictures are chronicled here.

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/pissing-in-duchamps-fountain/

And you can hear Eno describe his endeavor himself in this YouTube video. The story starts at 17:11. His rationale that the art world was doing exactly what Duchamp was protesting with his piece is quite interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkHAH10xdrE