This year marks the centennial of avant-garde prankster Marcel Duchamp‘s scandalous readymade artwork Fountain, a supine urinal on which the artist inscribed the name “R. Mutt.” To celebrate the work’s 100th anniversary, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which owns the piece, unveiled an exhibition called Marcel Duchamp and the Fountain Scandal, which includes photographs and publications from the time, as well as more Duchamp readymades from their collection. As part of the exhibition, artist Richard Gabriele transformed the infamous urinal into a mini golf course outside the museum.
To create the interactive piece, Gabriele made a plaster replica of the urinal, signed “R. Mutt 2017.” The artist notes that the mini golf intervention channels the absurdist spirit of Dada by inviting visitors to play, while the sculpted urinal evokes Duchamp’s tendency to make full-scale and miniature copies of his work, as well as the Roman tradition of copying Greek masterpieces. The flag is a hand-pulled woodblock print of Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp’s feminine alter ego) on handmade Japanese paper painted with watercolor.
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“What I didn’t expect was that golfers who made a hole in one began collecting pieces of the plaster that fell in the bowl from golf balls chipping away at the sculpture,” Gabriele tells Creators. “I thought it was great that they wanted to take pieces of the art home with them as souvenirs of their experience.”
Click here to see more of Richard Gabriele’s work. Marcel Duchamp and the Fountain Scandal is on view at the Philadelphia Art Museum until December 1.
Related:
Original Creators: Avant-Garde Prankster Marcel Duchamp
These Animated Touchscreen Hand Gestures Would Have Made Marcel Duchamp Proud
A Seminal Duchamp Work Was Re-Imagined As A Kilometer-Long Light Painting
