Did Duchamp steal the authorship of "Fonte" from a female artist?

A long debate about the authorship of “Fountain” by Marcel Duchamp it was recently reignited by two British art historians.

New research by Glyn Thompson, former professor of art history at the University of Leeds, suggests that credit for 'The Fountain' was stolen by Duchamp from German Dada artist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Their findings will be included in “Art Exposed,” an upcoming book by art critic and former gallery director Julian Spalding.

Thompson presents two new pieces of evidence. First, he identifies the handwriting scrawled on the urinal as belonging to Von Freytag-Loringhoven, who was living and working in Philadelphia when the work was submitted to the New York Society of Independent Artists exhibition in 1917. Second, he labels the urinal as a unique product, a model made by a store in Philadelphia – a city that Duchamp never visited.

“This is the final cornerstone of the arch that connects the Urinal to Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven,” said Spalding.” Duchamp could not have bought it where he later claimed he did.”
This contradicts Duchamp's 1996 claim that he obtained the urinal from JL Mott Iron Works. Thompson says the Manhattan-based company never manufactured or sold this model and has identified the actual model that he says was submitted by Von Freytag-Loringhoven to the Society of Independent Artists exhibition. The original urinal did not survive, although it was photographed by Alfred Stieglitz after being rejected by exhibitors.

Thompson went so far as to track down the only two surviving examples of the same make and model. Furthermore, Duchamp stated that the “R. Mutt” the inscription found on “Fountain” was a deliberate perversion of the manufacturer's name JL Mott. But Thompson believes von Freytag-Loringhoven intended it to be a pun on the German word for impoverishment, armut – something she experienced a lot in her vibrant and all-too-short life.

Spalding, for his part, has long been an outspoken supporter of attributing “Fountain” to Von Freytag-Loringhoven. In his new book “Art Exposed”, published by Pallas Athene Books, he reaffirms his claims that “R. Mutt” is also a reference to mutter, which means “mother” in German. In April 1917, the month the work was presented, the US was about to declare war on Germany and Spalding sees the writing as a desperate, if comical, plea from von Freytag-Loringhoven: “She was saying to America, 'Don't piss on my country.'”

In light of Thompson's latest research, Spalding believes there are seismic implications for the contemporary art world. “Reassigning the urinal to Elsa restores the meaning and power of visual creation,” Spalding said in emailed comments. “It exposes the statement that anything can be art. Art is communication or it is nothing. Elsa's urinal destroys all found objects, conceptual art, and the millions that were invested in it. It’s a bubble that’s about to burst.”

Spalding and Thompson originally presented their argument in 2014, in an article titled “Did Marcel Duchamp Steal Elsa’s Urinal?” which appeared in “The Art Newspaper”. At the heart of his claim at the time was a letter Duchamp wrote to his sister, saying that a friend, using the pseudonym Richard Mutt, had put the urinal on display. The pair claim that Von Freytag-Loringhoven was this friend, a suggestion first put forward by the artist's biographer, Irene Gammel.

This thesis was strongly contested in two articles published in “Burlington Magazine” in 2019 by Dawn Adès and Bradley Bailey. Adès wrote that Gemmel incorrectly translated the letter to mean that the urinal was sent personally to Duchamp rather than submitted for exhibition.

“The main weakness of [their] theory is the argument that Duchamp could not have conceived the idea or arranged for the urinal to be submitted to the Independents because no direct evidence has been presented to support this argument,” Bailey said. “It’s simply a very rigid position to defend.”

Bailey also added that it is “ridiculous to claim that [Thompson] found 'the only two' urinals of this model in existence at that time.”

Another issue in Spalding and Thompson's argument is the address that appears in one of Stieglitz's photographs, which is linked to Louise Norton, a writer involved in Duchamp's artistic circle. Spalding and Thompson claimed that Von Freytag-Loringhoven sent the photograph to Norton. Although, as Bailey revealed when publishing an interview given by Norton in 1978, Norton never met the German artist and only remembered her vaguely.

According to Adès and Bailey, it is more likely that Duchamp simply used Norton's address to submit work.

The reason for so much secrecy? Duchamp was on the board of directors of the Society of Independent Artists. As Duchamp noted in that 1966 interview, he wanted to create a scandal by resigning from the board when it rejected the urinal.

The effort to posthumously credit unheralded female artists is fair and vital. There is no doubt that Von Freytag-Loringhoven was a talented artist with an eye for ready-mades. But, according to Bailey, “so far, there is not a single direct piece of evidence that links her to the “Fountain”. Could there be one out there? Possibly. Did Thompson or Spalding identify any? A resounding no.”

Source: Artnet News