At the time Duchamp was a board member of the Society of Independent Artists.

After
much debate by the board members (most of whom did not know Duchamp had
submitted it) about whether the piece was or was not art, Fountain was hidden from view
during the show.[9] Duchamp resigned from the Board in protest.

The piece was a porcelain urinal, which was signed "R.Mutt" and titled Fountain.
Submitted for the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, in 1917, the first
annual exhibition by the Society to be staged at The Grand Central Palace in New
York, Fountain was rejected by the committee, even though the rules stated that all works
would be accepted from artists who paid the fee. Fountain was displayed and
photographed at Alfred Stieglitz's studio, and the photo published inThe Blind Man, but
the original has been lost. The work is regarded by art historians and theorists of the
avant-garde, such as Peter Brger, as a major landmark in 20th-century art. 17 replicas
commissioned by Duchamp in the 1960s now exist

Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He
CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance
disappeared under the new title and point of view created a new thought for that object.

Duchamp described his intent with the piece was to shift the focus of art from physical
craft to intellectual interpretation.

Similarly, philosopher Stephen Hicks[18] argued that Duchamp, who was quite familiar
with the history of European art, was obviously making a provocative statement
with Fountain: The artist is a not great creatorDuchamp went shopping at a plumbing
store. The artwork is not a special objectit was mass-produced in a factory. The
experience of art is not exciting and ennoblingat best it is puzzling and mostly leaves
one with a sense of distaste. But over and above that, Duchamp did not select just any
ready-made object to display. In selecting the urinal, his message was clear: Art is
something you piss on.

R mutt - Armut" (meaning "poverty"), or possibly "Urmutter" (meaning great mother)

"R.M" would stand for "Readymade" which is the fountain itself and "utt" when read out
loud sounds like "eut t" in French (much like Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q.).

The Independent noted in a February 2008 article that with this single work, Duchamp
invented conceptual art and "severed forever the traditional link between the artist's
labour and the merit of the work".[21]

L.H.O.O.Q. is a work of art by Marcel Duchamp. First conceived in 1919, the work is
one of what Duchamp referred to as readymades, or more specifically an assisted readymade. The readymade involves taking mundane, often utilitarian objects not generally
considered to be art and transforming them, by adding to them, changing them, or (as in
the case of his most famous work Fountain) simply renaming them and placing them in a
gallery setting. In L.H.O.O.Q. the objet trouv ("found object") is a cheap postcard
reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa onto which Duchamp drew a moustache
and beard in pencil and appended the title.[1] Although many say it was pioneered by him,
in 1883 Eugne Bataille created a Mona Lisa smoking a pipe, titled Le rire.

When asked why they felt they had to add to Duchamp's work, Chai said, "The urinal is
there it's an invitation. As Duchamp said himself, it's the artist's choice. He chooses
what is art. We just added to it.

On January 4, 2006, while on display in the Dada show in the Pompidou Centre in
Paris, Fountain was attacked by Pierre Pinoncelli, a 76-year-old [27] French performance
artist, with a hammer causing a slight chip. Pinoncelli, who was arrested, said the attack
was a work of performance art that Marcel Duchamp himself would have appreciated.
[28]

In 1993 Pinoncelli urinated into the piece while it was on display in Nimes, in

southern France. Both of Pinoncelli's performances derive from neo-Dadaists'

and Viennese Actionists' intervention ormanoeuvre.