Is Modern Art Based on a Lie?

Is conceptualism, a key Modernist idea, founded on a brilliant gesture, a misunderstanding, or outright theft? Alexander Adams investigates controversial new evidence.

The most influential art piece of modern times, one that came to define an era and launched untold arguments, was an everyday object so banal that it was often misplaced or thrown away. In 1917, among a range of Cubist, Fauvist, Expressionist paintings, and Futurist sculptures, the selection committee of an open exhibition in New York received a submission of a ceramic urinal. It was ordinary in every way, except that someone had dated and signed it; it was called Fountain (1917). Not only was this piece of sanitary ware not art—and was not made by the submitting artist—but the named artist (Richard Mutt) didn’t even exist.

The Most Influential Work of Modern Art

The artist credited with the prank that would spawn Conceptual Art was Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). Duchamp was a French artist who had arrived in New York a few years earlier and was uniquely well-connected within the tiny modern art scene. He had gone through phases of Post-Impressionism and Futurism already and had been a co-founder of the Dada anti-art movement. The Dadaists produced nonsense poetry by using random words and staged bizarre performances. They mocked tradition, undermined trust in authority, and derided common morality. Dadaists were the first group that took an absolutely nihilistic stance. Movements such as the Beat group, Situationism, punk, Post-Modernism, minority-sexuality advocacy, and a dozen others have (knowingly or otherwise) channelled Dadaism’s defiant opposition to normality.

The exhibition committee declined to exhibit R. Mutt’s sculpture, as it was not deemed to be art. Later, gallerist and photographer Edward Stieglitz took a photograph of the object, and press articles discussed Fountain’s rejection. Meanwhile, the original was lost. Initially, the “affair of the Fountain” was a diverting incident, discussed by art historians but otherwise considered unremarkable. Duchamp’s status as the author of Fountain became established in the 1920s and was never disavowed by him.

In the early 1960s, a new generation of artists, in search of a riposte to the prevailing domination of gestural abstract painting, decided that instead of making art themselves, they would designate pre-existing objects as art. These so-called “readymades” are objects that have the status of art conferred upon them by the artist—an idea innovated by Duchamp and embodied in Fountain. The readymade became central to Conceptual Art, which came to dominate the fine arts from the 1960s onwards. By 2004, Fountain was considered foundational to modern art and was voted by experts the “most influential work of modern art.”

Yet perhaps this was all based on a lie. 

The True Artist Revealed?

In Art Exposed, a book due to be published on November 2nd, Julian Spalding presents the case that Fountain did not originate with Duchamp. Instead, he submitted the object on behalf of Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927), a poet and artist who was part of the Dadaist group in America in 1917.

In a series of articles written for art newsletter The Jackdaw, art tutor and writer Glyn Thompson examined the ambiguities around Fountain and Duchamp’s vague statements. Spalding summarises Thompson’s evidence in his book.

Later, Duchamp always claimed Fountain meant nothing and that it was an anti-art joke. Back in 1917, Duchamp had written to his sister that “One of my female friends under a masculine pseudonym, Richard Mutt, sent in a porcelain urinal as a sculpture.” He did not elaborate. This sentence strongly suggests that Duchamp did not come up with the idea but only submitted the urinal as a joke on behalf of a friend, probably his associate Freytag-Loringhoven. She had a history of such actions; she had already nominated a readymade consisting of a plumbing joint on a wooden box, entitled God.

“Duchamp Stole Her Work”

In an interview for this article, Spalding made a damning critique of Duchamp: 

“Duchamp stole her work cynically because he had exhibited nothing at the time, and needed to pretend he had, if he was going to claim to be one of the Founding Fathers of Modern Art. And he changed its meaning by claiming that it was meaningless—except for being a piss-take against art itself—which is certainly wasn’t. His crime is double - not only did he steal a work from a great woman artist, but he stole its meaning too.”

Spalding, former director of museums in Glasgow, Manchester, and Sheffield, is the first high-profile museum figure to publicly support Thompson’s reattribution of Fountain to Freytag-Loringhoven. Taking Thompson’s arguments from the pages of The Jackdaw to The Guardian—through an article written by art journalist Dalya Alberge—Spalding has brought this dispute to the awareness of the general public. Non-art historians Irene Gammel and Siri Hustvedt have already backed Freytag-Loringhoven as the originator, but Spalding and Thompson are art experts and carry special weight.

However, Spalding is not dismissive of modern art as a whole, not even of Fountain. "It was the world's first great pacifist, feminist work of art," he told me, going on to discuss its sculptural qualities. "Elsa's Urinal was a sculpture—as Duchamp said at the time—whereas his Readymades were not meant to be read as sculptures at all (they were verbal puns) and were not exhibited at all."

Spalding is scathing about the concept of the readymade. "This had great appeal to egalitarians by pulling art down from its pedestal, destroying its exclusivity, and making it accessible to everyone, but it also undermined any attempt to make value judgments about quality in art."

The Power of Inertia and Commerce

Thompson and Spalding have previously struggled to garner interest in considering Fountain as a work by Freytag-Loringhoven. Inertia is a real thing. The task of revising tens of thousands of books on Modernism, many of which discuss Fountain and reproduce Stieglitz’s photograph, is not feasible. Harder still is getting millions of people around the world to mentally reassign Fountain from Duchamp to a shadowy artist, about whom they know nothing.

Spalding notes the resistance encountered by Freytag-Loringhoven’s supporters, assigning this intransigence to the entrenched interests of “thousands of professional reputations across the art world—art curators and art critics, art historians and art teachers, art dealers and, above all, artists themselves have been invested in Conceptual Art—believing it to be Next Thing in the History of Modern Art. Those who’ve questioned it have been outcasts for decades and are not in positions of authority.” Additionally, there is a reluctance to tarnish the reputation of Duchamp, whose readymades are worth serious money. In the 1960s, Duchamp authorised 17 reproductions of Fountain. One of these sold at auction in November 1999 for $1.76 million. Collectors will zealously protect their investments.

The Tate defends the current attribution of Fountain to Duchamp, arguing, “It seems improbable that [Freytag-Loringhoven] would have not have vaunted her creation of a work that had caused such a flurry of press interest.” However, Fountain was little known in the 1920s in Berlin and Paris, where Freytag-Loringhoven moved after leaving New York. She died in 1927, well before appropriation became commonplace. Had both she and Fountain been famous by the late 1920s, she might well have spoken up.

However, the status quo may change due to another powerful force: feminism. The case for Freytag-Loringhoven may gain traction because she was a woman. Champions for women artists would love to claim Freytag-Loringhoven the double prize of authoring an iconic piece of art and the prestige of founding Conceptual Art.

How will supporters of women’s art respond if labels around the world start changing? When I asked Spalding this, he replied, “They should leap for joy—and I hope they will!”