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How to begin a portrait. Facetime Portraits: Jonathan Yeo paints Fearne Cotton. Part 1

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Duchamp's "Fountain"

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is one of Duchamp's most famous works and is widely seen as an icon of twentieth-century art. The original, which is lost, consisted of a standard urinal, usually presented on its back for exhibition purposes rather than upright, and was signed and dated 'R. Mutt 1917'. Tate's work is a 1964 replica and is made from glazed earthenware painted to resemble the original porcelain. The signature is reproduced in black paint. Fountain has been seen as a quintessential example, along with Duchamp's Bottle Rack 1914, of what he called a ' readymade ', an ordinary manufactured object designated by the artist as a work of art (and, in Duchamp's case, interpreted in some way).

Duchamp later recalled that the idea for Fountain arose from a discussion with the collector Walter Arensberg (1878-1954) and the artist Joseph Stella (1877-1946) in New York. He purchased a urinal from a sanitary ware supplier and submitted it - or arranged for it to be submitted - as an artwork by 'R. Mutt' to the newly established Society of Independent Artists that Duchamp himself had helped found and promote on the lines of the Parisian Salon des Indépendants (Duchamp had moved from Paris to New York in 1915). The society's board of directors, who were bound by the Society's constitution to accept all members' submissions, took exception to Fountain, believing that a piece of sanitary ware - and one associated with bodily waste - could not be considered a work of art and furthermore was indecent (presumably, although this was not said, if displayed to women). Following a discussion and a vote, the directors present during the installation of the show at the Grand Central Palace (about ten of them according to a report in the New York Herald) narrowly decided on behalf of the board to exclude the submission from the Society's inaugural exhibition that opened to the public on 10 April 1917. Arensberg and Duchamp resigned in protest against the board taking it upon itself to veto and effectively censor an artist's work.

This was no small matter. The idea of having a jury-free exhibition of contemporary art had become invested with the aspirations of many in the art world for New York to become a dynamic artistic centre that would rival and even outstrip Paris. Duchamp, as head of the hanging committee, had already signaled the democratic ethos of the new Society by proposing that works should be hung by the artists' last names (in alphabetical order) rather than according to the subjective views and preferences of one or more individuals. With the support of some backers, he and his close friends Henri-Pierre Roché (1879-1959) and Beatrice Wood (1892-1998) produced the first dada periodical in New York, titled pointedly the Blindman, on the first day of the show in part to celebrate (and in part to observe and comment upon) 'the birth of the Independence of Art in America' (Henri-Pierre Roché, 'The Blind Man', Blindman, no.1, 10 April 1917, p.3). There was therefore a good deal at stake in the decision of the board to defend a particular conception of art at the expense of departing from its own much advertised policy of 'no jury - no prizes'. Responding to press interest in the affair, the board issued a statement defending its position: 'The Fountain may be a very useful object in its place, but its place is not in an art exhibition and it is, by no definition, a work of art.' (Naumann 2012, p.72.)

Duchamp never explicitly commented on why he wanted to test the principles of his fellow board members but it may well have sprung from his own experience at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. In 1912 he had submitted his important painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2 to the Salon, and, even though the work was listed in the catalogue, the organisers, increasingly unhappy at the subject and title of the painting and how this reflected upon them, asked Duchamp's brothers, who were also artists, to ask him to withdraw it a few days before the show opened. He quietly did so, but he experienced this as an extraordinary betrayal and later described it as a turning-point in his life. The creation and submission of Fountain can thus be seen as in part as an experiment by Duchamp to replay this event, testing the commitment of the new American Society to freedom of expression and its tolerance of new conceptions of art.

Within a day or so of the exhibition opening, Duchamp located the work, which had been stored in the exhibition space behind a partition, and took it to be photographed by the leading photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz (1877-1946). (A diary entry of Beatrice Wood for 13 April 1917 recorded that she went with Duchamp to 'see Stieglitz about "Fountain"', while a letter written by Stieglitz dated 19 April 1917 noted that he had been asked to take the photograph 'at the request of Roché, Covert, Miss Wood, Duchamp & Co'. See Naumann 2012, p.72.) As the work of art was lost thereafter (and had been seen by very few people), Stieglitz's photograph, which according to a letter had been taken by 19 April 1917, became a key document in recording the work's existence. Stieglitz was proud of the image, writing in a letter dated 23 April 1917, 'The "Urinal" photograph is really quite a wonder - Everyone who has seen it thinks it beautiful - And it's true - it is. It has an oriental look about it - a cross between a Buddha and a Veiled Woman' (Naumann 2012, p.74).

A slightly cropped version of the photograph was published in the Blind Man to illustrate an anonymous editorial that defended the urinal in clear - and, in their implications, revolutionary - terms: 'Mr Mutt's fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bathtub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers' shop windows. Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain 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.' (Anon., 'The Richard Mutt Case', Blind Man, New York, no.2, May 1917, p.5; note that the second issue formulated the journal's title as separate words.) Duchamp later said that he shared and approved of the views expressed in the article, which Beatrice Wood claimed in her 1992 autobiography to have written.

Importantly, Duchamp was not publicly known as the creator of Fountain at the time, although some of his closest friends (such as Walter Arensberg) must have known of, and many others suspected, his involvement. Stieglitz, for example, wrote on 19 April 1917, 'a young Woman (probably at Duchamp's instigation) sent a large porcelain Urinal on a pedestal to the Independent[s]' (Naumann 2012, p.74.) Duchamp later explained that he had not made his identity known because of his position on the Society's board: if his fellow board members had known he had submitted Fountain, their response might well have been different, and he would have been shown to have put friends and colleagues in a potentially difficult position (which, indeed, was the case). The fact that 'R. Mutt' was an unknown artist meant that Duchamp could test the openness of the society to artworks that did not conform to conventional aesthetic and moral standards without compromising the outcome or his relationships with board members, though at the expense of being able to avow that the work was his own.

'R. Mutt', however, was an unusual name, with comic overtones, and this might have given people a clue as to its falseness. Later in life, when asked whether 'R. Mutt' was a pun on the German word Armut meaning poverty, Duchamp was quoted as explaining:

Mutt comes from Mott Works, the name of a large sanitary equipment manufacturer. But Mott was too close so I altered it to Mutt, after the daily cartoon strip "Mutt and Jeff" which appeared at the time, and with which everyone was familiar. Thus, from the start, there was an interplay of Mutt: a fat little funny man, and Jeff: a tall thin man ... I wanted any old name. And I added Richard [French slang for money-bags]. That's not a bad name for a pissotière. Get it? The opposite of poverty. But not even that much, just R. MUTT.
(Camfield 1989, p.23.)

In fact, Mutt was the tall thin man in the cartoon duo but Duchamp's point about having wanted essentially 'any old name' remains. On other occasions Duchamp recalled that he bought the urinal at J.L. Mott Iron Works Company. Surviving records for the sanitary ware firm are incomplete but show models similar, if not entirely identical, to Fountain (see Camfield 1989, p.24, note 23).

Duchamp never commented - or was asked to comment - upon the rotation of the urinal by ninety degrees, but this was perhaps dealt with in the anonymous Blind Man article as a matter of 'placing' it 'so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view'. Duchamp was fascinated by the problems of representing spatially a fourth dimension, often demonstrated in mathematical texts through diagrams showing the rotation of solids. It is possible that the rotation of the urinal was linked to his broader interest in seeing things quite literally in a new perspective. The intimate nature of the function of the urinal, and its highly gendered character, also resonated strongly with the complex psycho-physical themes of the masterpiece he was working on at the time, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even 1915-23 (also known as The Large Glass; see Tate ), although relatively few at the time knew of the unfinished work and, therefore, were able to make this association.

Several photographs believed to have been taken in 1918 show Fountain hanging in the doorway of Duchamp's studio (there is no reason to believe that Duchamp owned a second or different urinal), but what happened to the artwork thereafter is a mystery. It was possibly thrown out when Duchamp went to Buenos Aires in 1918, the year that the poet Guillaume Apollinaire wrote an article on the Richard Mutt affair for the Mercure de France. Focusing on the issues involved in the case (and not mentioning Duchamp by name), Apollinaire concluded, 'The viewpoint of the Society of Independent Artists is evidently absurd for it arises from the untenable point of view that art cannot enoble an object' (Naumann 2012, p.75).

In the early 1920s Duchamp travelled frequently between America and France. He was thought to have abandoned making art, focusing instead on playing chess competitively even while remaining part of artistic circles. Fountain was not publicly commented upon again until 1934 when the leader of the surrealist movement and poet André Breton wrote a pioneering article that reviewed Duchamp's career to date and placed the Fountain firmly in the context of Duchamp's readymades (André Breton, 'La Phare de la mariée', Minotaure, vol.2, no.6, 1935, pp.45-9). Since so little was published on Duchamp, the article seems to have been based on in-depth conversations with the artist. It was in this period that Duchamp felt the need to consolidate and make more accessible his otherwise dispersed (and already partly lost) oeuvre. He published a facsimile edition of his notes relating to the Large Glass, and produced a portable museum of his key works in an editioned box, titled Box in a Valise (From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy) 1935-41 (Rrose Sélavy was the name of Duchamp's female alter ego). In this he included a miniature Fountain arranged next to an equally miniature Large Glass, the lower half of which is known as the 'bachelors' domain'.

Duchamp's profile in art circles rose dramatically in the 1950s and 1960s, not least as a new generation of artists identified his dada-period works as precedents for their own. In 1963 the Pasadena Art Museum organised the first retrospective of Duchamp's work. Addressing the growing number of requests from gallerists and museums for works to show, Duchamp authorised a number of replicas of his original readymades, many of which had been lost. He authorised replicas of Fountain in 1950 and 1963. In 1964 the Galleria Schwarz reproduced Fountain, along with other dada-period works by Duchamp, in an edition of eight, fabricating the objects on the basis on the Stieglitz photograph and working closely with Duchamp. Four further examples were also made at this time, one each for Duchamp and Arturo Schwarz, and two for museum exhibition. Duchamp signed each of these replicas on the back of the left flange 'Marcel Duchamp 1964'. There is also a copperplate on the base of each work etched with Duchamp's signature, the dates of the original and the replica, the title, the edition number and the publisher's name, 'Galleria Schwarz, Milan'. For some, such replicas seemed to undermine cardinal qualities of readymades, namely, that they should be mass-produced items and ones chosen by an artist at a particular moment and time. Duchamp, however, was happy to remove the aura of uniqueness surrounding the original readymades, while the production of replicas ensured that more people would see the works and increased the likelihood that the ideas they represented would survive.

Tate's replica was included in the inaugural displays of Tate Modern in 2000, and in 2004 Fountain topped a poll of 500 British art experts as the single most influential artwork of the twentieth century, ahead of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 1907 and Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych 1962. Simple in form but rich in metaphor, the work has generated many interpretations over the years, and continues to be seen as a work that challenges - or, at the least, complicates - conventional definitions of art. In his introduction to his 1989 book-length study of the work William Camfield acknowledged the 'staggering' quantity of material written about the piece but noted that, despite the wealth of scholarship,

an examination of this literature reveals that our knowledge of this readymade sculpture and its history is riddled with gaps and extraordinary conflicts of memory, interpretation, and criticism. We are not even able to consult the object itself, since it disappeared early on, and we have no idea what happened to it ... We do not even known with absolute certainty that Duchamp was the artist - he once attributed it to a female friend - and some of his comments raise fundamental questions regarding his intentions in this readymade.
(Camfield 1989, p.13.)

Camfield's reference to a female friend here was based on a letter Duchamp wrote to his sister Suzanne, who lived in Paris, on 11 April 1917. It included the following comment: 'One of my female friends under a masculine pseudonym, Richard Mutt, sent in a porcelain urinal as a sculpture; it was not at all indecent - no reason for refusing it. The committee has decided to refuse to show this thing. I have handed in my resignation and it will be a bit of gossip of some value in New York.' (Camfield 1989, p.28.) Camfield commented on this reference to a woman:

Even if we grant that he did not want his test of the Independents compromised by knowledge that Fountain had been submitted by a director of the organization, why did he mislead his sister in Paris? Was the account given to Suzanne merely a 'white lie' to conceal his authorship, or might we have here an early appearance of Duchamp's female alter ego Rrose Sélavy, or might he have been telling the truth? Was Fountain actually submitted by a female friend? And if, indeed, a female friend sent Fountain to the Independents, must that mean that she and not Duchamp was the artist who conceived, selected, and altered the urinal - or might she have acted merely as the shipping agent whose participation kept Duchamp out of sight? The last possibility seems most plausible, but this point remains a mystery.

As Camfield noted, there are several potential explanations for Duchamp's comment to his sister. Unfortunately, the records of the Society of Independent Artists are of no help here, as most were lost in a fire. It is important to note, however, that Duchamp wrote 'sent' not 'made', and his words do not indicate that he was implying that someone else was the work's creator.

In 2002 literary historian Irene Gammel claimed that, if a woman was involved in the submission of Fountain, that woman might have Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927), an eccentric German poet and artist who loved Duchamp and was in turn jealous of him and mildly contemptuous of what she saw as his absorption in fashionable circles (see Irene Gammel, Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity. A Cultural Biography, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2002). Gammel explored the possibility that the Baroness was the creator of Fountain, claiming close affinities between the use of new sanitary ware in Fountain and of an old piece of plumbing (a plumbing trap), mounted on a carpenter's mitre box in a sculpture titled God that has been attributed to the Baroness. This unsigned work, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, was originally thought to be by the painter Morton Schamberg on the basis of his photograph of it, but was reattributed by the scholar Francis M. Naumann to von Freytag-Loringhoven 'with' Schamberg, on the grounds that the assemblage of extraneous elements and unusual title probably fitted her artistic practice better than his, although he may have helped her with aspects of it (for a discussion of the documentary evidence supporting this reattribution see Francis M. Naumann, New York Dada 1915-23, New York 1994, p.128 note 9, p.234 and p.171.) The work's aesthetic, however, is far removed from the mass-produced aspect of Fountain, and there is nothing in von Freytag-Loringhoven's other works to suggest a lineage for the thinking expressed in Fountain.Gammel noted that von Freytag-Loringhoven was in Philadelphia in spring 1917, linking this to some unsourced press reports at the time of the scandal of the work having originated in Philadelphia, and concluded, 'there emerges the question of whether the rabble-rousing Baroness may have had a hand in the mysterious Fountain ... While final evidence of the Baroness's involvement may be missing, there is a great deal of circumstantial evidence that points to her artistic fingerprint' (Gammel 2002, p.225).

As Gammel acknowledged, however, there is no contemporary documentary evidence or testimony that points to the involvement of von Freytag-Loringhoven in Fountain. The Baroness, who was certainly not shy of controversy, seems never to have claimed to have been involved, even when she returned to New York and mixed in the same circles as Duchamp (she later modelled nude for a film he attempted to make with Man Ray), and it seems improbable that she would have not have vaunted her creation of a work that had caused such a flurry of press interest, particularly if it was associated in many people's minds with Duchamp. It perhaps should be noted that Duchamp spent much of his life quietly helping many other artists, and any suggestion that he would claim the work of another as his own runs completely counter to the high esteem in which he was held by artist friends. When he discussed his work with Breton in 1935, it seems improbable that he would have risked claiming Fountain to be part of his oeuvre at a time when so many who had been in New York in 1917 (and who also knew von Freytag-Loringhoven) would have been able to contradict him, had his authorship been in doubt in any way.

One such person was Man Ray, who had been on the organising committee of the Society of Independent Artists in 1917 and knew von Freytag-Loringhoven. In 1945, however, Man Ray referred in print to the story of Fountain without any qualification in an article he published in View magazine about his long friendship with Duchamp. Remembering how in 1917 Duchamp recovered Fountain from the Grand Central Palace where it had been temporarily stored behind a partition, he wrote: 'Grand Central: The very independent Richard Mutt robbed the vestals of their vespasienne in broad daylight and called it another day.' (Man Ray, 'Bilingual Biography', View, vol.5, no.1, March 1945, p.32.) To reflect the playful, transatlantic nature of their friendship, Man Ray used enigmatic phrasing that mixed French and English throughout the text. Here he used the French word vespasienne, meaning a structure or partition surrounding a urinal, for Fountain and talked alliteratively about 'vestals' (in classical times the guardians of the temple) to refer to those who were meant to guard the contents of the exhibition from such incursions. Having found where the piece was hidden, Duchamp had presumably been able to walk out of the Grand Central Palace with Fountain because none of the guards thought it an artwork.

As for the possible role of a woman in the work's submission, it is known from a careful decipherment of the address label that hangs from the urinal in Stieglitz's photograph that a woman was indeed implicated, though not as the creator of the piece. The details were those of Louise Norton (1890-1989), one of Duchamp's closest friends at the time and the author of a discursive article about the Fountain called '"Buddha of the Bathroom"' that appeared in the second issue of the Blind Man. ('To those who say Mr. Mutt's exhibit may be Art, but is the art of Mr. Mutt since a plumber made it? I reply simply that the Fountain was not made by a plumber but by the force of an imagination; and of imagination it has been said, "All men are shocked by it and some overthrown by it."' She added, 'there are those who anxiously ask, "Is he serious or is he joking?" Perhaps he is both! Is it not possible? ... there is among us to-day a spirit of blague [joke] arising out of the artist's bitter vision of an over-institutionalized world of stagnant statistics and antique axioms.' Louise Norton, '"Buddha of the Bathroom"', Blind Man, no.2, May 1917, p.6.) Significantly, in the days that followed the decision not to exhibit the Fountain the artist Charles Demuth wrote to Henry McBride, the art critic of the Sun, saying that the piece had been submitted 'by one of our friends' and asking if McBride would consider writing about the affair to give it more publicity. He added: 'P.S. If you wish any more information please phone, Marcel Duchamp, 4225 Columbus, or, Richard Mutte, 9255 Schuyler' (Camfield 1989, p.30). The telephone number given for the misspelt Richard Mutt was again that of Louise Norton. Although interviewed about Fountain late in her life, Louise Norton (or Louise Varèse, as she became) did not provide any new information about her involvement, and today nothing is known why her address appears on the label attached to Fountain or why her number was given to a journalist where information about Richard Mutt might be had. The gaps in knowledge about the details of her involvement in the submission of the piece to the society and its defence to the press do not materially affect Fountain 's status or meaning, but her role is a reminder of how in New York in spring 1917 Duchamp was not alone in seeking changes in how art was then thought of and practised.

Fountain tested beliefs about art and the role of taste in the art world. Interviewed in 1964, Duchamp said he had chosen a urinal in part because he thought it had the least chance of being liked (although many at the time did find it aesthetically pleasing). He continued: 'I was drawing people's attention to the fact that art is a mirage. A mirage, exactly like an oasis appears in the desert. It is very beautiful until, of course, you are dying of thirst. But you don't die in the field of art. The mirage is solid.' (Otto Hahn, 'Entretien Marcel Duchamp', Paris-Express, 23 July 1964, p.22.) Extensively studied and the subject of various interpretations, Fountain has continued to exert an extraordinary power over narratives of twentieth-century art in large part because of its piercing - if also humorous - questioning of the structures of belief and value associated with the concept of art.

Further reading
William Camfield, Marcel Duchamp: Fountain, Houston 1989.
Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, revised and expanded edition, New York 1997, pp.648-50.
Francis M. Naumann, The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost: Essays on the Art, Life and Legacy of Marcel Duchamp, New York 2012, pp.70-81.

Sophie Howarth
April 2000
Revised Jennifer Mundy
August 2015
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.

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'Fountain', Marcel Duchamp, 1917, replica 1964 | Tate

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'Fountain', Marcel Duchamp, 1917, replica 1964 on display at Tate Modern.

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more Duchamp

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"I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste." Duchamp

Like so many of his contemporaries he was a multidisciplinary and explored various fields such as being a professional chess player, painter, volunteer at military service, inventor, librarian, art dealer, cameraman and a several other roles, wearing a different hat each time.
In his later years he completely withdrew from the art world and seemed as if he was playing chess all of the time, however he was working on one piece, a final piece for 20 years it is named Etant donnes (Give: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas) it is a sculpture only visible through the peepholes in a wooden door.

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Marcel Duchamp and the road to the core concept and idea that creates art

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"I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste."

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The idea is king - how Marcel Duchamp changed art

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During the first half of the exhibition, Duchamp leads the way in undermining the very foundations of visual art. In the second half, Picabia and Man Ray, ultimately joined by Duchamp, put art back together - but in such a way that it would never be the same again.

All three began by painting pastiches of work by the Fauves and Cubists. Even at their most conventional, you detect a lightness of touch and a subtle erotic charge that isn't instantly visible to the casual observer. It is Duchamp, in Nude Descending a Staircase, who first uses mechanical imagery to represent the female body; Duchamp who first makes a transparent work of art; and Duchamp who begins to think outside the realms of the visual to make art with language. But both Picabia and Man Ray quickly picked up these ideas.

The stripper Picabia evokes in I See Again in Memory My Dear Udnie or the vaudeville dancer in Man Ray's The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows were sisters to the most notorious striptease artiste in art, the frigid bride in Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass).

Seen here in Richard Hamilton's replica, the motorised bride floats across the upper half of the 9ft-high glass panel, forever beyond the reach of the nine frustrated bachelors below, who look like spark-plugs and who are trying to strip the bride of her clothes using an electrical mechanism Duchamp likened to a two-stroke engine.

The Large Glass is full of visual puns about masturbation, ejaculation and orgasm, but its best joke is conveyed through the written word. In the notes and texts Duchamp made to accompany the work ("The Green Box"), he sends up the language of science and mathematics to describe the indescribable - the mechanics of sexual arousal.

Picabia responded with a drawing showing two hinged windows, through which floats a line of poetry addressed to his wife, and Man Ray photographed nude women suggestively posed beside machines.

As he worked on The Large Glass between 1912 and 1915, Duchamp gradually came to locate the essence of the art work in its appeal to the mind, not the eye. The ready-made was born when he realised that something can change its meaning without changing its form. From this it follows that the context in which an object is seen is all-important, and that what we see depends on what we look for.

His own early career was a good example of how this can happen. In France, Duchamp was a bit of a loser, a minor Salon Cubist. But the scandal caused by the exhibition of his Nude Descending a Staircase at the Armory Show in New York in 1913 made him a celebrity in the US. On his arrival in New York two years later, he discovered that he was treated as the personification of everything outrageous about modern art.

At the heart of this show is the gallery devoted to the ready-mades, including the greatest of them, the urinal signed by "R Mutt" and exhibited in 1917 under the title Fountain.

To me, it is still incredible that anyone, ever, made the leap of faith and imagination necessary to accept the original as a work of art. But, once you admit the possibility that it is more than a bit of plumbing, its title could easily refer not to the urinal itself but to the man urinating into it, and, if you start to imagine its open, curvaceous form as female, with the man standing unzipped in front of it - well, you can see where this is leading.

Man Ray explored the concept of the ready-made in Obstruction, a mobile made by hanging dozens of wooden coat-hangers together from the ceiling, and by unravelling a paper lampshade to create a spiralling abstract sculpture. He also made not-quite-ready-made surrealistic objects, such as the sewing machine wrapped in a blanket and the nail-studded iron. By the 1920s, he had become known for his surrealist photographs, and particularly for his ravishingly beautiful still lifes made by placing objects on light-sensitive paper and then exposing them to light.

The ready-made didn't especially interest Picabia, whose weapon of choice against bourgeois taste was parody. In sensuous paintings he called "Transparencies", he appropriated figures and landscape motifs from Renaissance and Baroque art, superimposing the outlines of one image on top of another to build up a tunnel-like space.

During the Second World War, he changed style again to paint luridly lit pin-up girls. Pictures such as the one of two lesbians frolicking in bed beside a disgruntled bulldog fly in the face of good taste, belonging instead to the world of Pirelli calendars and Vargas nudes.

By the 1920s Duchamp claimed to have given up painting for chess, saying that he had run out of ideas. But, from 1946 until 1966, he was secretly working on his last work Etant donnés ("Given"), which was unveiled only after his death in 1968. In this show, it is represented by a not-at-all satisfactory virtual reproduction.

To see it, you have to peer through peepholes in a wooden door to discover a hyper-realistic three-dimensional diorama showing a naked woman lying on her back in an autumn landscape. Behind her a trompe l'oeil waterfall flickers.

Seeing Etant donnés in this show, you realise how much Duchamp's late return to representational art owes to the style Picabia used to paint his pin-ups and to the sexuality of the nudes in Man Ray's photos.

Duchamp brings the wheel full circle. Having destroyed what he called "retinal" art with the ready-mades, here he puts it back again, but with a difference. Every detail of Etant donnés sets off a trail of association that leads the viewer back to Duchamp's work and ideas.

In this way, he countered a fundamental objection to the ready-mades: that visually, snow shovels and bottle racks aren't interesting to look at. In Etant donnés, Duchamp demonstrated that art doesn't have to be non-visual to be conceptual, and it doesn't have to come ready-made to be intelligent.

Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia at Tate Modern until May 26; info: 020 7887 8888

The Culture Minute: Richard Dorment on Duchamp

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During the first half of the exhibition, Duchamp leads the way in undermining the very foundations of visual art. In the second half, Picabia and Man Ray, ultimately joined by Duchamp, put art back together - but in such a way that it would never be the same again.

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*Your audience know when it is good
*You know when it is finished
*Your aims are straightforward - you have a mission and you do it... simple

When you move into expressing more than the image is when it gets complicated

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Kippenberger painting done by a street sign painter

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Martin Kippenberger
Untitled (from the series Leiber Maler, male mir / Dear painter paint for me) 1981

Collection Albert Oehlen

Martin Kippenberger
Untitled (from the series Leiber Maler, male mir / Dear painter paint for me) 1981
Collection of Adam and Lenore Sender

Martin Kippenberger
Nicht zu Hause schlafen müssen / Not to Have to Sleep at Home 1984
Private collection, Berlin

For the series entitled Lieber Maler, male mir ( Dear painter, paint for me) 1981, Martin Kippenberger hired Mr Werner, a Berlin sign painter, to make paintings based on images supplied by the artist. This gesture of handing over the execution of the paintings was a riposte to the rising stars of the German art world at the time, such as Helmut Middendorf and Reiner Fetting,who had based their reputation on a signature style of painterly expressionism. Four of the twelve paintings in this series are presented here.

Lieber Maler, male mir ( Dear painter, paint for me) establishes many of the concepts and preoccupations that would reappear in Kippenberger's work over the next twenty-five years. Kippenberger the performer, for example, is already evident through his (partly disguised) presence in two of the paintings: seen from behind as a drinking partner on a bar crawl outside a Düsseldorf hangout, and as the sophisticated tourist sitting casually on a discarded couch on a street corner in New York. The Lieber Maler, male mir ( Dear painter, paint for me) series also introduces many of Kippenberger's other favourite topics (aside from himself): the equal treatment of commodities, kitsch and culture and not least of all the act of hiring someone else to produce his own artwork.

Even while painting with his own hand, Kippenberger maintained his critical stance. Blass vor Neid steht er vor deiner Tür ( Pale with Envy, He Stands Outside Your Door) 1981, for instance, comprises twenty-one individual canvases shown together as one work, but each canvas has a separate title and there is no consistent style. The artist pastiches early twentieth-century abstraction or paints figurative imagery with expressionist impasto, using imagery as diverse as a nude descending a staircase (inspired by photographer Helmut Newton and artist Marcel Duchamp), still life studies or a squeezed line of silicone attached to the canvas, titled Werner, ein stolzer Wurm ( Werner, A Proud Worm) - an apparent reference to the Lieber Maler, maler mir sign painter. Kippenberger rejects the traditional idea that an artist works to achieve a signature style, creating instead a persona that shifts in multiple directions at once.

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Martin Kippenberger: Room guide, room 1 | Tate

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For the series entitled Lieber Maler, male mir ( Dear painter, paint for me) 1981, Martin Kippenberger hired Mr Werner, a Berlin sign painter, to make paintings based on images supplied by the artist.

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Marc Quinn's Alison Lapper sculpture made by others in Sicily

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Overview:

Quinn has made a number of sculptures of Alison Lapper. As first evidenced in his series, The Complete Marbles, he is drawn to subjects that present images of 'incomplete' bodies. The works explore the contradictions between our outside appearance and inner being. They celebrate imperfection and the beauty of different kinds of bodies as well as the strength and vitality of the human spirit.

Having made a life-size sculpture of Alison Lapper when she was pregnant in 2000 and one of her and her son Parys later that same year, Quinn was commissioned by the Mayor of London in 2005 to make the large scale sculptureAlison Lapper Pregnant for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. The sculpture was carved from white marble, weighs 13 tonnes and stands 3.55 metres high.

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Overview: Quinn has made a number of sculptures of Alison Lapper. As first evidenced in his series, The Complete Marbles, he is drawn to subjects that present images of 'incomplete' bodies. The works explore the contradictions between our outside appearance and inner being.

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Jake and Dinos Chapman have a team of workers!

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1/2 Jake And Dinos Chapman - What Do Artists Do All Day ?

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Is getting someone else to realise your idea "cheating"?

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Is getting someone else to realise your idea "cheating"?

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The term drawing is applied to works that vary greatly in technique. It has been understood in different ways at different times and is difficult to define. During the Renaissance the term 'disegno' implied drawing both as a technique to be distinguished from colouring and also as the creative idea made visible in the preliminary sketch.

The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines drawing as:

'the formation of a line by drawing some tracing instrument from point to point of a surface; representation by lines; delineation as distinguished from painting...the arrangement of lines which determine form.'

Despite this insistence on the formation of line and the implied lack of colour, few would deny that a work formed by dots or shading or wholly in line but in a range of colours is a drawing.

The following drawings, made in different ways, have been selected to help define and also to stretch the boundaries of what drawing is. They vary in the medium used, which includes metal-point, graphite, charcoal, ink, and chalk. Some fulfill the strict dictionary definition of drawing, others do not.

Why draw?

There are many different reasons why people draw:

to visualise thought and work something out

to provide a pattern to follow or give instructions how to make something

to help clients visualise what is proposed

to give pleasure as ends in themselves

Talking about drawing

Many creative people have stressed the importance of drawing for their work in other media. These quotations give an idea of the function and importance of drawing in their lives. They range in date from the 15th century to the present and demonstrate the enduring importance of drawing.

Cennino Cennini (c.1370 - 1440)

'In the first place you must study drawing for at least one year; then you must remain with a master at the workshop for the space of six years at least , that you may learn all the parts and members of the art...drawing without intermission on holidays and work-days'.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)

'The young man should first learn perspective, then the proportions of objects. Next, copy work after the hand of a good master, to gain the habit of drawing parts of the body well; and then to work from nature, to confirm the lessons learned.'

Michelangelo (1475 - 1564)

'Let whoever may have attained to so much as to have the power of drawing know that he holds a great treasure.'

Titian (c.1487/1490 - 1576)

'It is not bright colours but good drawing that makes figures beautiful.'

Giorgio Vasari (1511 - 1574 )

'Man was not then considered a good goldsmith unless he could draw well.'

Tintoretto (1518 - 1594)

'Beautiful colours can be bought in the shops on the Riatlo, but good drawing can only be bought from the casket of the artist's talent with patient study and nights with out sleep.'

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780 - 1867)

'Drawing is the probity of art. To draw does not mean simply to reproduce contours; drawing does not consist merely of line: drawing is also expression, the inner form, the plane, the modeling. See what remains after that.'

John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)

'The art of drawing which is of more real importance to the human race than that of writing...should be taught to every child just as writing is.'

Camille Pissarro (1831 - 1903)

'it is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character.'

Paul Cezanne (1839 - 1906)

'Drawing and colour are not separate at all; in so far as you paint, you draw. The more the colour harmonizes, the more exact the drawing becomes.'

Auguste Rodin (1840 - 1917)

'What is drawing? Not once in describing the shape of the mass did I shift my eyes from the model. Why? Because I wanted to be sure that nothing evaded my grasp of it... My objective is to test to what extent my hands already feel what my eyes see.'

Henry Tonks (1862 - 1937)

'Italy up to near the end of the 16th century will always be the best school for all those who want to learn what drawing can explain...As it is by drawings that we make our records of form, its importance cannot be exaggerated. A school of painting in which drawing is not taught and drawing dissociated with painting is not worthy of the name of school. When a student begins to paint he will soon perceive the relation of drawing to paint.'

Wassilly Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)

'Drawing instruction is a training towards perception, exact observation and exact presentation not of the outward appearances of an object, but of its constructive elements, its lawful forces-tensions, which can be discovered in given objects and of the logical structures of same-education toward clear observation and clear rendering of the contexts, whereby surface phenomena are an introductory step towards the three-dimensional.'

Henri Matisse (1869 - 1954)

'Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.'

Spencer Frederick Gore (1878 - 1914)

'By drawing, man has extended his ability to see and comprehend what he sees.'

Paul Klee (1879 - 1940)

'In the final analysis, a drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better.'

Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)

'Drawing is a kind of hypnotism: one looks in such a way at the model, that he comes and takes a seat on the paper.'

André L'Hote (1885 - 1962)

'You can only learn to paint by drawing, for drawing is a way of reserving a place for colour in advance.'

Alec Issigonis (1906 - 1988)

'My doodles and sketches are not the work of an academic engineer. They represent many years of design study in attempts to produce the best value for money in the field of small car design.'

Jim Dine (born 1935)

'Drawing makes invention more accessible for me. Faster. Immediate. I start a drawing and I start to invent. I am always destroying the drawing's status quo. I guess you could say I practice my own form of larceny. I sabotage reality, otherwise its like kissing without using your tongue. I can't even cook a hamburger without messing with it... Before, often I lay down everything in a realistic way, but now, I have less patience for realism, my heart is too full. I need to release more emotion. I want more emotion and that gets in the way of realism. I want to cut the realism. Now, I'm letting off a lot of firecrackers, and I'm putting down a lot of ideas as though I was building with ideas. Things are coming up. Things are coming up and I have no way to speak about what the things are, but things are coming up that wouldn't ordinarily grow next to each other. The depiction of physical energy on the paper and the disturbing of the paper's surface are other ways to bring the drawing to life.'

David Hockney (born 1937)

'At the time of co-ordinating (in collaboration with Allen Jones) the 2004 Royal Academy Exhibition which had a special focus on drawing: 'drawing has been neglected for the last 30 years in art education...That was based on the idea that photography would suffice as a view of the world...people are now aware that photography can be digitally manipulated and may no longer reflect reality...It is time for us to look at how images are made, to place greater value on drawings and draughtsmanship...practically everything comes to life on a drawing board.'

Eva Jiricna (born 1939)

'I sketch all the time, I am surrounded by endless amounts of A3 and A4 size pads. I am constantly trying to resolve problems and details. I have a necessity to know what a detail looks like - how the materials come together, how it works in three-dimensions. If I draw it for myself, I understand it. If I try to imagine it, it is too whimsical. Sketching is a tool - an extension of one's brain.'

Grayson Perry (born 1960)

'Until we can insert a USB into our ear and download our thoughts, drawing remains the best way of getting visual information on to the page. I draw as a collagist, juxtaposing images and styles of mark-making from many sources. The world I draw is the interior landscape of my personal obsessions and of cultures I have absorbed and adapted, from Latvian folk art to Japanese screens. I lasso thoughts with a pen. I draw a stave church or someone from Hello! Magazine not because I want to replicate how they look, but because of the meaning they bring to the work.'

Alexander McQueen (1969 - 2010)

'I was literally 3 years old when I started drawing. I did it all my life, through primary school, secondary school, all my life. I always, always wanted to be a designer. I read books on fashion from the age of twelve. I followed designer's careers. I knew Giorgio Armani was a window-dresser, Emanuel Ungaro was a tailor.'

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The term drawing is applied to works that vary greatly in technique. It has been understood in different ways at different times and is difficult to define. During the Renaissance the term 'disegno' implied drawing both as a technique to be distinguished from colouring and also as the creative idea made visible in the preliminary sketch.

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Is there such a thing as cheating in art?

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Is there such a thing as cheating in art?

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gridding
projecting
paying others

where do you draw your line?

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Not sure why I put these onto this page - they are just really nice

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Not sure why I put these onto this page - they are just really nice

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“I’ve always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It’s people who have brought drama to the pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.”  Lucian Freud 1922-2011.

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Digital surrealism

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Taking realism and twisting it