#R MUTT 1917 ARCHIVE#

#R MUTT 1917 ARCHIVE#

The French conceptual artist Saâdane Afif has systematically excised reproductions of Duchamp’s Fountain from books and magazines, amassing an archive of nearly 1000 separate framed pages (four of which are included in the exhibition) the California artist Ray Beldner has sewn dollar bills into the shape of a urinal that he amusingly calls Peelavie Kathleen Gilje, a former restorer of Old Master paintings, has placed the image of a haloed urinal within the simulation of a gilded, Trecento Italian frame the German artist Rudolf Herz has rendered multiple impressions of the urinal in anamorphic projection Pamela Joseph, who made an entire series of paintings based on images censored in books published in Iran, has replicated the image of a pixilated urinal Carlo Maria Mariani, an Italian-born artist known for his fusion of complex conceptual themes with neo-classical imagery, has painted a masked nude kneeling next to Duchamp’s urinal Alexander Kosolopov, a Russian artist who now lives and works in New York has replicated Suprematist compositions inside three actual men’s urinals the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei has taken a photograph of Lego blocks being flushed down a toilet because the company producing the toy refused his request for a massive order on grounds that their product could not be used for political purposes (which, of course, Ai Weiwei’s work turns into a statement about censorship) the Conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth has made a work specially for this exhibition, in which neon letters replicate Duchamp’s handwriting and a framed text presents a quote from Duchamp about the readymade, one that relates indirectly to Kosuth’s own work. Variations on this theme are as different as the work of the individual artists themselves. Mutt / 1917.” Even those who elected to use the form of a urinal as a point of departure have introduced significant variations, as in the case of Sherrie Levine who cast a found urinal in bronze Douglas Vogel who purchased one manufactured in Russia and created a name tag in Cyrillic Pablo Echaurren, who covered its surface with decorative grotesques that evoke his South American ancestry or Richard Pettibone, who rendered multiple images of the photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz that was reproduced the urinal in The Blind Man, inspired by the fact that he had himself experienced problems with vision. Only one-Elaine Sturtevant-has made what could be considered a straightforward appropriation, selecting a manufactured urinal and signing it “R. Each artist approaches the work in very different ways, in most cases, reflecting their own prior aesthetic preoccupations. The present exhibition celebrates the momentous implications of that gesture in the work of thirty-one artists, all of whom consciously pay homage to the precedent of Duchamp’s infamous Fountain (as the urinal was titled). Mutt was a pseudonym concocted by Marcel Duchamp, whose submission of this work resulted in changing the very definition of art, an explosive disruption in the philosophy of aesthetics that continues to reverberate within the contemporary art world to this day. In accordance with the rules of the organization-which was to have no prizes and no jury-all works that were submitted to the exhibition would be displayed, but a glistening white porcelain urinal submitted by a man identified only as Richard Mutt was unceremoniously excluded from the show, the hanging committee having objected to its status as a work of art. Naumann Fine Art on Monday, April 10, 2017, marking the 100th anniversary (to the day) of the opening of the First Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York City. “ Marcel Duchamp Fountain: An Homage” opens at Francis M.

R mutt 1917