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2
GIVEN
THE R I C H A R D
MUTT
CASE
In philosophy analogies mean something very different from what
they mean in mathematics. In the latter they are formulas which
express the equality of two quantitative relations, and are always
constitutive; so that if three terms of the proportion are given, the
fourth is likewise given, that is, can be constructed. But in philoso­
phy the analogy does not consist in the equality of two quantitative,
but of two qualitative relations, so that when three terms are given
I may learn from them a priori the relation to a fourth only, but not
that fourth term itself The relation yields, however, a rule ac­
cording to which I may look in experience for the fourth term, and
a sign by which I may detect it.
—Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
P REFA
CE
The artists and others were having continual discussions about free­
dom in art, the evils of the jury system. Inevitably there came the
idea of holding an exhibition without jury. The Grand Central
T H E
U N I V E R S A L
AND
THE
S I N G U L A R
Palace, a huge building, was chosen and the information broad­
casted that anyone paying six dollars could send two paintings and
have them hung without benefit ofjury. Walter [Arensberg] and Mar­
cel [Duchamp] were especially enthralled with the concept, and
George Bellows, Walt Kuhn, Rockwell Kent, Walter Pach, John
Covert all helped with the bylaws.
The day before the exhibition opened, Walter Arensberg was
standing with Rockwell Kent in front of a glistening white object.
Both men were violently arguing, and paying no attention as I
approached.
These words, written by Beatrice Wood a long time after the events, may
not describe them with the utmost accuracy, which is just as well considering
the legendary character of the whole story they serve to introduce. She has
actually given several versions of the scene that took place, if it did, on April 8
or 9, 1917; in another, George Bellows replaces Rockwell Kent in his argument
with Walter Arensberg. But the essential argument itself remains. In this partic­
ular version—the most dramatic—she goes on reconstructing the heated ex­
change between the two men as dialogue:
"This is indecent!" went on Kent flatly, with red face.
"That depends upon the point of view," said Walter gently.
"We cannot show it," went on Kent flatly, with red face.
"The entrance fee has been paid, we cannot refuse it," blandly
added Walter.
"But it is gross, offensive."
"Only in the eye of the beholder"
"There is such a thing as decency, an end to how far a person
can go "
Walter said mildly, "But the purpose of this project is to accept
anything an artist chooses. It is in our bylaws."
There was an ominous silence, then Kent exploded, "Do you
90
GIVEN
THE
RICHARD
MUTT
CASE
mean that if a man chose to exhibit horse manure we would have
to accept it!"
"I am afraid we would," answered Walter, with mock sorrow,
slowly shaking his head suggesting that all was not as simple as it
seemed. . . .
"Someone has sent it as a joke," continued Kent in anger.
" O r a test," finished Walter patiendy.
The pristine oval white object on a black pedestal gleamed
triumphantly. It was a man's urinal upside down. 1
Was Duchamp's urinal a joke or a test? Or was it both? Jokes and tests
certainly abound in the history of modern art, and they're usually the two sides
of one and the same coin. Every futurist prank, dadaist hoax, expressionist farce,
or surrealist pun that history has recorded was a way of scoffing at some author­
ity whose liberalism, open-mindedness or resistance to ridicule it put to a test.
Duchamp's urinal is no exception. But here the joke was a test in more than
one sense, for the testing device was obviously designed to be itself submitted
to a test: if the hanging committee of the show at the Grand Central Palace
consented to exhibit the gleaming object poking fun at them, they would have
to call it art. If they were to pass the test, so would it. They didn't, as we shall
see. But it did, and that's the irony of the joke. Who would dare deny, today,
that Duchamp's urinal is art? Such is its status in any case or it wouldn't be on
the record. What is also on the record is that cohorts of artists registered that
Duchamp's joke had passed the test and then went on to play variations on it,
pushing the limits of art further and further, probing its boundaries, some jok­
ingly, some in dead seriousness. From surrealism to conceptual art, half of the
1. Francis N a u m a n n , ed., "I Shock Myself: Excerpts from the Autobiography of Beatrice
Wood," Arts Magazine 5 1 , n o . 9 (1977): 135-136. T h e version with Bellows substituting
for Kent is in Wood's autobiography, I Shock Myself (Ojai, Calif- Dillingham Press, 1985),
pp. 29-30
91
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U N I V E R S A L
AND
THE
S I N G U L A R
avant-garde played a game on the definition of art in general. (The other half,
which is often called modernism, apparently played a different game, confining
itself within the specific boundaries of painting or sculpture.2) While Meret
Oppenheim cloaked a cup and its saucer in fur and Magritte put a painting
representing a piece of Brie under a cheese-cover, the surrealists as a group put
up a show where myriads of "objets sauvages," redubbed "objets surrealistes,"
claimed their newly conquered art-status. Later, Yves Klem exhibited the Void
and Arman the Full, while Manzoni sold cans of Artist's Shit and balloons of
Artist's Breath. Warhol produced fake Brillo Boxes while Judd and Morris pro­
duced boxes. Rauschenberg sent his gallerist, Iris Clert, a telegram stating "This
is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so," and a few years later On Kawara sent his
gallerist, Yvon Lambert, a telegram stating "I am still alive." And by the time
Ian Wilson could carry on conversations about art and call them art, Robert
Barry was able to invite his audience to an (imaginary) round-the-world hop­
ping from one gallery to the next, only to discover that the promised show was
to be held the next month in the next gallery.3 In each of these pieces, subtle
humor and deliberate provocation mingled to raise the question of the condi­
tions under which any given thing could be called art. But as the last two ex­
amples suggest, an answer, or perhaps two answers, were soon found, which
roughly delineate two "theories" of art: something is art because an artist so
decided; something is art because the context so determined it. The first theory
was already upheld by Andre Breton, apropos precisely the readymade, when
2. The game is only apparently different. More about this in chapter 4, which investigates an
episode of recent art history where the modernist tradition (in Greenberg's sense) and the
Duchamp-tradition came to meet.
3. Robert Barry's Invitation Piece (1972-1973) consisted of eight invitation cards sent at onemonth intervals, where one gallery would announce an exhibition by Robert Barry to be
held the next month in another gallery. The piece started with an invitation sent by Paul
Maenz in Cologne announcing a show at Art & Project in Amsterdam, and came full circle
eight months later with Gian Enzo Sperone in Turin announcing a show at Paul Maenz.
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M U T T
C A S E
he defined it as "an ordinary object promoted to the dignity of art object simply
by way of the artist's choice." 4 Let's call this the appropriative theory of art. The
second one is the contextual theory of art, as it is for instance illustrated by Daniel
Buren: "The Museum/Gallery instantly promotes to 'Art' status whatever it
exhibits with conviction, i.e., habit." 5 Let's notice in passing that between
Breton and Buren and between the time of surrealism and that of conceptual
art, dignity sank to the level of status and choice (or conviction) fell into habit.
But promotion remained promotion.
The joke really is that both theories are true. They are true in the way
tautologies are true, which is hilarious. Lest it should be incoherent, any serious
theory of art needs to define "art" and "artist" with the same family of criteria,
so we shall assume that these two do. Well, if you say that something has be­
come art because an artist appropriated it, then you must admit that anybody
who appropriates something as art becomes an artist. Or else he or she was an
artist according to some other theory of art, and then it is not true that some­
thing has become art because an artist appropriated it. If you say that something
has become art because it was placed in the art context of a museum or a gallery,
you must admit that the context is artistic because it contains art. Or else it was
instituted as art museum or art gallery on the basis of some other conception of
what art is, and then it is not true that anything it contains and exhibits out of
"habit" is art. In both cases, if your theory is true it is circular and if it isn't
circular it is false. Moreover, if one is false the other is true, since the success of
Duchamp's test—or joke—admits only these two. In fact, they flow into one
another in an endless circle, since an artist is someone who is recognized as such
by an art institution and since an institution is one of art because it shows what
artists do. Thus both theories boil down to a single one, the institutional theory,
4. Andre Breton and Paul Eluard, Dictionnaire abrege du surrealisme (Paris. Galerie des BeauxArts, 1938), m y translation.
5. Daniel Buren, "Function of the Museum," in Five Texts ( N e w York: T h e J o h n Weber
Gallery; London: T h e Jack Wendler Gallery, 1973), p. 58
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AND
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which is true by petitio principii. And so did it happen that the joke passed the
test.
One imagines Duchamp's pleasure if he had lived to read, under the signa­
ture of an eminent aesthetician who, by the way, confesses that "as works of art
Duchamp's readymades may not be worth much, but as examples of art they
are very valuable for art theory," this definition of art as pataphysically compli­
cated as it is tautologically luminous: "A work of art in the classificatory sense
is (1) an artifact (2) a set of the aspects of which has had conferred upon it the
status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf
of a certain social institution (the artworld)." 6 We learn in the book of Professor
George Dickie, the author of this gem of a quote, that "artifactuality" can itself
be a status conferred even on a product of nature, that the aspects of this artifact
upon which the status of candidate for appreciation is conferred are simply the
aspects submitted to the said appreciation, that this appreciation follows no cri­
teria aside from the conventions which govern the presentation of said artifact
in the artworld, and finally that anybody who sees himself or herself as a mem­
ber of the artworld thereby becomes a member. And so did it happen that the
test became a joke.
Dickie's book was published in 1974, but he had issued earlier versions of
his institutional definition of art as early as 1969, the very year in which a major
proponent of conceptual art, Joseph Kosuth, came up with a definition of art
as tautology that is virtually identical. 7 1 see no coincidence in this congruence,
which is not to say that I accuse either of them of having looked over the other's
shoulder. There was tremendous historical pressure at the time in favor of such
art theories and it seems, given the recent spectacular comeback of readymades,
shelved or not, in today's neoconceptualism, that the pressure is still with us. It
should entice us to go back to where it all started and give the Richard Mutt
6. George Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic An Institutional Analysis (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univer­
sity Press, 1974), p 34.
7. More about Kosuth's definition of art in chapters 4, 5, and 7
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C A S E
case a closer look, taking our interpretive clues from Marcel Duchamp himself
rather than from a late, crucial but particularly ill-conceived reception of the
readymade. Hence the above Preface and the following Warning:
WA
R NIN
G
Given, first, the waterfall, second, the illuminating gas, we shall
determine the conditions for the allegorical appearance of several
collisions seeming strictly to succeed each other according to cer­
tain laws, in order to isolate the sign of the accordance between,
on the one hand, this allegorical appearance and, on the other, a
choice of possibilities legitimated by these laws and also occa­
sioning them. 8
Taking our interpretive clues for Duchamp's Warning, we notice that it
sounds like a mathematical theorem, assigning a task to the reader: we shall determine the conditions . . . in order to isolate the sign of the accordance. . . . The text,
however, is cryptic and calls for an interpretation of the givens. Here is one,
prompted by many humorous cross-references among Duchamp's works: given,
first, by way of waterfall, a certain famous Fountain in the guise of a urinal signed
R. Mutt; second, by way of illuminating gas, the art institution which illuminates
this fountain and gives it its aura and its status, we shall determine the conditions for
the allegorical appearance, etc.
Duchamp's urinal, as we suspect from Beatrice Wood's story, has vanished.
All that remains are the replicas made by Sidney Janis in 1950, by Ulf Linde in
8. Marcel D u c h a m p , "Avertissement" ("Notice," better translated as "Warning"), The Green
Box, in SS, p . 28. I have actually deleted parts of the text and somewhat collaged it together
with the immediately preceding "Preface" (pp. 27-28), to which it is very similar. I have
also modified the translation to a certain extent. (Throughout this chapter, italics indicate an
expression by Duchamp.)
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AND
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1963, and by Arturo Schwarz in 1964, and also, of course, the photograph
taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1917. For us, now, this photograph is the allegorical
appearance of the urinal and the proof that the title Fountain once had a referent.
With good Duchampian logic, to determine the conditions of an appearance is
to explain the apparition which is its mold.9 So, we shall determine the conditions of the
allegorical appearance (or look) of Stieglitz's photograph by explaining the apparition (or advent) of several collisions seeming strictly to succeed each other according to
certain laws.
We are dealing with an organized series of events, each involving the ran­
dom collision of two independant causal chains, like a succession of chance
encounters: the readymade, Duchamp said elsewhere, is a kind of rendezvous.
Fountain was not the first of the readymades. O n the contrary, it was one of the
last "unassisted" ones. Nor was this the first time that a readymade had a rendez­
vous with its spectators. The succession of collisions that needs to be explained
thus recedes in time, preceding the Fountain. And since these collisions seem
strictly to succeed each other according to certain laws, we must look back in time in
order to identify these laws, starting with the one whose appearance (or look)
the Richard Mutt case dissipates and whose conditions of apparition (or advent)
it reveals.
The law in question, the one that legitimates and occasions a choice ofpossibilities, is simply stated: anyone can be an artist and anything the art institution
shows is art. George Dickie was not around in April 1917, at the first exhibition
of the Society of Independent Artists, Inc., and it's too bad: he would have saved
a lot of time. To all appearances, his pataphysical institutional theory already had
force of law. It follows directly though perhaps unwittingly from the bylaws of
the Society, founded in December 1916 in N e w York. Article II, section 3 of
9. The White Box, in SS, pp 84-85. In French, apparition only occasionally has the meaning
of a ghost-like vision It also, and more prosaically, means the simple fact of appearing, for
which the English only employs appearance again. In order to maintain the contrast between
the French apparence and apparition, I shall qualify the former as "appearance or look" and the
latter as "apparition or advent."
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the bylaws stated, "Any artist, whether a citizen of the United States or of any
foreign country, may become a member of the Society upon filing an applica­
tion therefor, paying the initiation fee and the annual dues of a member, and
exhibiting at the exhibition in the year that he joins." 10 Sections 4 and 5 speci­
fied that the initiation fee would be one dollar and the annual dues five dollars.
Notice that the bylaws spoke of "any artist" without indicating how artists are
recognized as such—probably by having paid their six dollars and by having
exhibited in the year they join. Thus the Society seemed ready, in advance, to
grant, with all kinds of delays, the status of artist to anyone fulfilling those two
conditions. Being an artist was cheap enough and exhibiting was no problem. 11
The Society's only rule was a no-rule rule, the slogan "No jury, no prizes." It
was not in the bylaws but it was commented upon at length in the foreword to
the catalogue of the first exhibition, which opened on April 10, 1917. This
stated that the Society was founded "for the purpose of holding exhibitions in
which all artists may participate independently of the decisions ofjuries." 12 This
was of course intended to free artists from the extremely conservative juries of
the National Academy of Design, until then the only institution in America
handing out certificates of legitimacy to anyone seeking the status of profes­
sional artist. The Society had no social mandate other than the one with which
it was endowed by its members, who, in return, had no proof that they
10. Cited by Clark S. Marior, The Society of Independent Artists, The Exhibition Record
1917-
1944 (Park R i d g e , N.J.: Noyes Press, 1984), p . 8 1 .
11. T h e press didn't fail to notice this O n e journalist ironically c o m m e n t e d on the Big Show,
as the first exhibition of the Society got to be called: "Step up, ladies and gentlemen! Pay six
dollars and be an artist—an independent artist! C h e a p , isn't it? Yet that is all it costs You and
I, even if we've never wielded a brush, squeezed paint from a tube, spoiled good paint with
crayon, or worked with a modelling tool, can buy six dollars worth of wall or floor space at
the Grand Central Palace." Q u o t e d in Francis N a u m a n n , " T h e Big Show, T h e First Exhibi­
tion of the Society of Independent Artists, Part II, T h e Critical Response," Artforum
(April 1979): 49
12. Marlor, Society of Independent Artists, p 7.
17
T H E
U N I V E R S A L
AND
THE
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were artists other than their membership card. Individually or as a group, the
Independent Artists had only the legitimacy they gave themselves through
self-proclamation.
The quantitative success of the Big Show in 1917 proves the theory of selfproclamation. Some 2,125 works by 1,235 artists were shown. There is no
doubt that given such numbers, the majority of the participants were amateurs
or would-be artists whom a jury or a commercial gallery would never have
accepted.13 The list of names tells us nothing, of course, since it consists mainly
of names unknown and soon to vanish. But the fact that as many as 414 women
were included, compared to 821 men, is a good indicator of the proportion of
nonprofessionals, given the hardly advanced state of women's emancipation at
the time. The number of related duos—husband and wife, brother and sister,
mother and daughter—is another.14 An unknown among all the unknowns who
grabbed their chance to call themselves artists, a certain Richard Mutt from
Philadelphia sent in a porcelain urinal entitled Fountain, conspicuously signed
and dated: R. Mutt 1917. He was in good company, no more and no less
talented after all than many a naive amateur whose display of clumsy craftsman­
ship embarrassed more than one critic. But Richard Mutt was soon to become
famous, while all the others would revert to anonymity. And the paradox is that
they had exhibited whereas Mr. Mutt's entry was censured, put behind a parti­
tion, surreptitiously stolen, rejected on a technicality by Rockwell Kent, broken
by William Glackens or bought away by Walter Arensberg—we'll probably
never know, among all the equally fantastic versions of the facts, which is the
right one. 15 In any case, Fountain was neither seen by the public nor listed in
13. That in itself was enough to infuriate conservative critics like Leila Mechlin, w h o w r o t e
in the May 1917 editorial of the American Magazine of Art, "Naturally a great many of those
w h o became exposed in this instance had not the smallest claim to the name artist." Q u o t e d
ibid., p 10.
14. Ibid., pp. 9, 10
15. Most versions, including Duchamp's contradictory statements to R u d i Blesh and Pierre
Cabanne, are discussed in William Camfield's essay "Marcel Duchamp's Fountain
98
Its History
GIVEN
THE
RICHARD
MUTT
CASE
the catalogue. A press release was issued by the board of directors on the day
following the opening, leaving no doubt as to the fate of the controversial
object: "The Fountain may be a very useful object in its place, but its place is
not an art exhibition and it is, by no definition, a work of art."16 By no defini­
tion indeed, except the one following from the very principles that the Society
had set for itself and then immediately betrayed at the start of its career. The
board of directors must have thought that art can be defined only through com­
parison, and that a urinal cannot be compared with anything known by the
name of art.
ALGEBRAIC
COMPARISON
In the Green Box, the "Preface" and the "Warning" are immediately followed
by a note entitled "Algebraic Comparison." Here it is:
a/b, a being the exhibition, b being the possibilities, the ratio a/b is
in no way given by a number c (a/b = c) but by the sign (/) which
separates a and b; as soon as a and b are known they become new
units and lose their numerical relative value, (or in duration); what
remains is the sign (/) which separated them (sign of the accor­
dance or rather o f . . . ? . . . look for it.)17
and Aesthetics in the C o n t e x t of 1917," Dada/Surrealism
16 (1987): 6 5 - 9 4 . For an expanded
version, see William Camfield, Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (Houston: T h e Menil Foundation
and H o u s t o n Fine Art Press, 1989). H e does not mention, however, what I believe to be the
most probable (in any case the least farfetched) version, that told by Rockwell Kent in his
autobiography, It's Me, O Lord ( N e w York: D o d d , M e a d & C o . , 1955), p. 316, in which he
says that after a heated discussion, the board of directors finally found a way to refuse Fountain
on the basis of a technicality: the entry card had not been filled in properly.
16. Q u o t e d in Francis N a u m a n n , " T h e Big Show, T h e First Exhibition of the Society of
Independent Artists, Part I," Artforum 17 (February 1979): 38.
17. SS, p . 28 (translation slightly modified).
99