thumb|[[Marcel Duchamp Fountain, 1917, photograph by Alfred Stieglitz at 291 art gallery following the 1917 Society of Independent Artists exhibit, with entry tag visible. The backdrop is The Warriors by Marsden Hartley.]]
Fountain was a readymade sculpture attributed to Marcel Duchamp in 1917, consisting of a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt". The work is regarded by art historians and theorists of the avant-garde as a major landmark in 20th-century art.
In April 1917, an ordinary piece of plumbing was submitted for the inaugural exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, to be staged at the Grand Central Palace in New York. When explaining the purpose of his readymade sculpture, Duchamp stated they are "everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's act of choice." In Duchamp's presentation, the urinal's orientation was altered from its usual positioning. Fountain was not rejected by the committee, since Society rules stated that all works would be accepted from artists who paid the fee, but the work was never placed in the show area. Following that removal, Fountain was photographed at Alfred Stieglitz's studio, and the photo published in the Dada journal The Blind Man. The original has been lost. Sixteen replicas were commissioned from Duchamp in the 1950s and 1960s and made to his approval.
In recent years it has been proposed that the original work was by the female artist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven who submitted it to Duchamp as a friend. New research from Glyn Thompson, a former professor of art history at the University of Leeds, identifies the handwriting scrawled on the urinal as belonging to Von Freytag-Loringhoven, who was living and working in Philadelphia when the urinal was submitted to the exhibition in 1917. He also labels the urinal as a unique model made by a plumbing shop in Philadelphia—a city Duchamp never visited.
Fountain is included in the Marcel Duchamp catalogue raisonné by Arturo Schwarz; The complete works of Marcel Duchamp (number 345).
Origin
thumb|upright=1.4|Eljer Co. Highest Quality Two-Fired Vitreous China Catalogue 1918 Bedfordshire No. 700
Marcel Duchamp had arrived in the United States less than two years prior to the creation of Fountain and had become involved with Francis Picabia, Man Ray, and Beatrice Wood (amongst others) in the creation of an anti-rational, anti-art, proto-Dada cultural movement in New York City.
In early 1917, rumors spread that Duchamp was working on a Cubist painting titled Tulip Hysteria Co-ordinating, in preparation for the largest exhibition of modern art ever to take place in the United States. When Tulip Hysteria Co-ordinating did not appear at the show, those who had expected to see it were disappointed. But the painting likely never existed.
thumb|The urinal suspended in Marcel Duchamp's studio at 33 West 67th Street, New York, 1917–1918. Two other readymades by Duchamp are visible in the photograph: [[In Advance of the Broken Arm (1915), and Hat rack (Porte-chapeau) (1917). This photograph is reproduced at the top right of one of the plates from Duchamp's La Boîte-en-valise.]]
thumb|[[The Blind Man, No. 2, New York, 1917, p. 5, by Louise Norton. The article included a photo of the piece and a letter by Alfred Stieglitz, and writings by Louise Norton, Beatrice Wood and Walter Arensberg.]]
thumb|A miniature of Fountain appears in Duchamp's Boîte-en-valise, [[Cleveland Museum of Art]]
According to one version, the creation of Fountain began when, accompanied by artist Joseph Stella and art collector Walter Arensberg, Duchamp purchased a standard Bedfordshire model urinal from the J. L. Mott Iron Works, 118 Fifth Avenue. The artist brought the urinal to his studio at 33 West 67th Street, reoriented it 90 degrees and wrote on it, "R. Mutt 1917". Duchamp elaborated:
<blockquote>
Mutt comes from Mott Works, the name of a large sanitary equipment manufacturer. But Mott was too close so I altered it to Mutt, after the daily cartoon strip Mutt and Jeff which appeared at the time, and with which everyone was familiar. Thus, from the start, there was an interplay of Mutt: a fat little funny man, and Jeff: a tall thin man... I wanted any old name. And I added Richard [French slang for money-bags]. That's not a bad name for a pissotière. Get it? The opposite of poverty. But not even that much, just R. MUTT. Duchamp resigned from the Board, and "withdrew" Tulip Hysteria Co-ordinating in protest. For this reason the work was "suppressed" (Duchamp's expression).</blockquote>
The New York Dadaists stirred controversy about Fountain and its being rejected in the second issue of The Blind Man which included a photo of the piece and a letter by Alfred Stieglitz, and writings by Louise Norton, Beatrice Wood, and Arensberg. An editorial, possibly written by Wood, accompanying the photograph, entitled "The Richard Mutt Case", made a claim that would prove to be important concerning certain works of art that would come after it: