Fountain — the blurred boundary between art and everyday life

Fountain is a 1917 work produced by Marcel Duchamp, who was know as the vanguard of modern art and responsible for revolutionary development in multiple art forms. The popular version of this art piece’s creation is that Duchamp purchased a standard Bedfordshire model urinal from the J. L. Mott Iron Works. He brought the urinal to his studio and reoriented it to a position 90 degrees from its normal position of use, and wrote on it, “R. Mutt 1917”.

The fact that an urinal could be brought to an exhibition and be viewed as one of the most important piece of art work of all time shocked me. Initially I feel this is an epitome of over interpretation. But after some researches and thoughts, I realized its significance in expressing “anti-logic”  against the traditional aesthetic philosophy and making a firm statement that every authority can be overthrown by placing a mundane object in an art gallery.