Terra Extraneus

A French man was fined $262,700 this week for attacking a urinal with a hammer.

Must be some urinal! You bet it is. A porcelain fixture manufactured by J. L. Mott Ironworks of New York in 1917. The urinal, now on display in a Paris art museum, has an estimated value of around $4 million.

Fountain is the most beloved work of French artist Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp, a leader of the Dada school of art, bought the urinal, scrawled the signature “R. Mutt” on its surface, and submitted it to an art show (it was rejected). In 2004 a poll of 500 British arts figures declared Fountain the most influential work of art of the 20th century. (Here’s a photo of Fountain, in case you’ve never seen one).

Earlier this month Pierre Pinoncelli took a hammer to the urinal, cracking it slightly. A Paris court this week handed Pinoncelli a three-month suspended sentence and the stiff fine. It’s not the first time Pinoncelli attacked Fountain. In 1993 he urinated in it.

What’s Pinoncelli’s problem with Duchamp’s plumbing masterpiece? Pinoncelli says he doesn’t have a problem with Fountain at all. Pinoncelli, 77, is a performance artist who says he was paying tribute to the work by participating with it. “I wanted to pay homage to the Dada spirit,” Pinoncelli testified at his trial. Pinoncelli’s argument is that his attack on Fountain constitutes another work of art.

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) was a Frenchman who spent most of his life in New York City, creating “ready-made” art works (every-day objects which become art by being declared to be so) and playing chess. Duchamp called his art “anti-art” because it mocked traditional art and art standards. Dada “anti-art” is absurdist art and an early cousin of abstract expressionism. Other famous Duchamp works include The Bicycle Wheel (1913), which is – well, you know – a bicycle wheel mounted on a stool, and In Advance of a Broken Arm (1915), which is a snow shovel.

Another Duchamp masterpiece, L.H.O.O.Q. (1919), is a reproduction of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, with the addition of a moustache and goatee. When the letters of the work’s title are pronounced out loud in French, they form a phrase which refers lustily to Mona Lisa’s derriere.

In other words, Pinoncelli has been found guilty of vandalizing the art of an artist who has been hailed for creating art which the artist himself called anti-art because it mocked art by, for example, imagining the vandalization of traditional art. It’s a strange world.

By the way, the Fountain on display in Paris is not the original. The original has long since been lost. Duchamp did the world a huge favor in 1964, at age 77, by creating several reproductions. That’s right, the urinal in Paris, worth several million dollars, is only a reproduction of the original urinal masterpiece.

What would Duchamp himself say about Pinoncelli’s attack on his beloved Fountain? The artist once wrote:

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.

Sounds to me that, were Duchamp alive today, he might be quite content with Pinoncelli “adding his contribution.” If not, of course, he could just reproduce another one. There’s always another urinal waiting to be declared a masterpiece.

Pinoncelli said he will appeal this week’s court decision. The world breathlessly awaits the outcome.

If only Frances Schaeffer were alive to see this.