What makes art in the Fountain 1917 by Marcel Duchamp?
Fountain is Duchamp’s most famous work. It is an example of what he called a ‘ready-made’ sculpture. These were made from ordinary manufactured objects. He then presented them as artworks.
What is the meaning of the Fountain art?
Fountain is a so-called ‘readymade’ sculpture, meaning that it is an ordinary, manufactured object that the artist has simply selected and perhaps modified in some way. Duchamp made very little modifications to the object, except turn it on its side and sign it with a pseudonym ‘R. Mutt’.
Where is Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain now?

The work became known later as an icon of New York Dada primarily through replicas, which Duchamp created first in miniature for his Box in a Valise (1935–41, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1950-134-934)….Fountain.
Title: | Fountain |
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Dimensions: | 12 × 15 × 18 inches (30.5 × 38.1 × 45.7 cm) |
Classification: | Sculpture |
What was the impact of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain?
The most obvious influence of Duchamp’s Fountain has been on the development of conceptual art, one in which ideas are more valued than the aesthetic quality of the works, art that often exposes items from everyday life and re-questions their meaning, as well as the meaning of the art as a medium itself.
What does Duchamp’s Fountain represent?
Duchamp adamantly asserted that he wanted to “de-deify” the artist. The readymades provide a way around inflexible either-or aesthetic propositions. They represent a Copernican shift in art. Fountain is what’s called an “acheropoietoi,” [sic] an image not shaped by the hands of an artist.
What is Duchamp’s Fountain and why is it significant?

Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not 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.
Why was Duchamp’s art important?
Duchamp’s “Fountain” was a significant contribution to the Dada movement, which arose in response to World War I and what some artists saw as the meaningless destruction caused by machines.