Duchamp's Fountain and the Urinal Factory

"Consider in this respect Duchamp's celebrated work ... Fountain, of 1917, which as every one knows was but a urinal of that period disconnected from the plumbing which gives it its familiar utility - familiar at least to just under half the population of the West - and turned on its back like an immobilized turtle.  It is a piece of industrial porcelain, purchased by Duchamp (himself!) from amoung its undistinguished lookalikes produced by a company called Mott Works.  It is inconsistent with the spirit of the work to imagine Duchamp anxiously examining the urinals in the salesplace until he found 'just the right one.'  Indeed, the original has been lost..."


- Arthur Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art, "Appreciation and Interpretation," 32.
 

Many things have been said about Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, and (almost) all the people speaking, writing, and thinking about it have been at one point struck with confusion.  I for one am no exception; the fact that the 'original' work, the particular upside-down urinal which caused the first wave of scandal, is lost, casts a heavy fog in my mind.  I have seen in person, in at least two different times and places, editions of Fountain which Duchamp purchased, signed, and numbered, to not only replace the lost one, but also to establish a series, like a series of prints.  To be sure, George Dickie is right when he says that there are pleasant qualities about Fountain (which, not coincidentally, are also the pleasant qualities of a right-side-up regular urinal): the smooth, gleaming porcelain; "its pleasing oval shape." [33]  But I am not wrong to say that the formal qualities of Fountain, however nice they may be, are not what attracts people to see and experience the work in real life.  


I was drawn in by the legends behind this infamous ready-made, I wanted to be enveloped by the aura and mystical ether of this work of art which inevitability finds itself in the repertoire of every relevant art history class.  How disappointed was I when I found out that not only was the original piece gone, that there were eight editions all competing to inherit the legend (this I discovered after I saw my second Fountain at a different museum, and both museums labeled the work as an original, which at that time I felt was dishonest.)   In the same spirit, I also no longer enjoy seeing Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes or Campbell's Soup Cans, and only appreciate my visit insomuch as the physical work is a reminder of the rich discourse emerging from its creation.  Frankly, the Benjaminian aura has escaped the work, or perhaps it was never there, and the essence of the artwork (or at least the allure) rests on concept and philosophy.  To this I believe Mr. Danto will agree.  


One of my favourite things in philosophy are thought experiments - that is, the consideration of a theory or principle in a proposed situation, i.e. experiment, without the intention of putting it into play in actuality, for the purpose of thinking through the consequences and implications.  Fountain, like all ready-mades or art works which are formally identical to "mere objects" are rich sources for the formulation of thought experiments.  Here is one, with a bit of absurdity thrown in, for you to ponder:


Imagine that a prominent museum is directly adjacent to a Motts Works factory, which through the years has continued to produce the exact same model of urinal as those purchased in the early twentieth century by Duchamp. This prominent museum proudly houses an edition of Fountain (although, if one were to make a small change and say that the museum possesses not an edition, but the lost original, this experiment would still hold), and one day during closing hours, a new member of the janitorial staff mistakenly takes the work to be a misplaced product from Motts Works which has somehow worked itself into the building.  Being a responsible person, he cleans the messy signature (Duchamp's rough scribble of R. Mutt is easily seen as vandalism), removes the work from the museum and returns it to the factory, and Motts Works place it back in their production line.  Sometime after, the curator of modern art learns of what has happened, and in a panic, rushes to the factory to retrieve the great work.  However, nestled within hundreds of its identical siblings, and without distinguishing marks, Fountain is no longer a singular work and the curator cannot make heads or tails of which urinal is a urinal, and which is (or was) the Duchamp.  My question now is: Does it matter which urinal is retrieved?  Is the discourse on Fountain dislocated without that particular and specific urinal which Duchamp had selected?