>> So we have a piece of sculpture, piece of ready-made art by by Marcel Duchamp. It's called Fountain. It's a urinal turned upside down and signed R Mutt and dated 1917. Its famous or infamous, depending on your point of view. And here, it is in my power. I guess I should start by asking why would we put this sweater? What are some reasons why this makes sense to be to fit in our conversation Emily Hartnett? Why? >> Because it disrupts conventional ideas of what our is, what it should look like. >> And how does that work in a museum, for instance, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art where there is one of these you can go into that room? It's the Walter and Louise Orangeburg collection along with some brancusi and some Baroness, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. And of course, some famous to show and you go in there and people are typically saying, what? Standing in front of the urinal. >> That's not our, I can do that. Yeah, are you sure this isn't the bathroom? >> That's what you've been hanging around. What do you say if you're a buttinsky? What counterargument do you make to the person who is loudly saying? What the hell is this, Ambrose? What encounter are you into? >> I mean, what was so interesting about this then was because Duchamp said, I'm submitting this as art that it just was. There was a decision made and it's about seeing, and being open to a kind of seeing. And once you name something art, it simply candy. So that's one reason why it's in Mokpo, Davey and Dave, what's another reason why it makes sense to fit in the rise of it's not a poem? How does it fit in with other poems that we talked about? When we're talking with modernism in mokpo, we're talking about a reorientation to the material of the every day. We're talking about language is part of the material of the every day and Fountain is similarly interested in thinking about the material culture, the physical objects of the every day and how they might be similarly refrained asking some related questions to one or modernist poets are thinking about. >> So modern art can reframe the way we think about ordinary whether it's a sculpture ready made an actual ready-made in the sense that you take a physical object out of its conventional settings, such as hardware store or whatever. Plumbing store and you move it to a gallery or you write some words like to make a refrigerator note. And you say, well, this is this this is a piece of right of it would never be considered a poem. So you reframe that. So that's how it works. Okay, good. Dave, you want to add to that? >> I just like the idea of going to a museum and hearing somebody say that's not art, and then asking them why not. Whatever the response is like I could do that. So is that the metric, because you can do that need is. Some you can do some things, you can not do others. So it becomes a slippery slope. And once you start interrogating that concept you start to think wow, it really isn't a normative standard what art is and the other poems that we've read are just points along that continuum that can show that there really is no standard against which this stuff should be judged. >> Anybody know Mike Wallace 60 Minutes for many years of journalists sort of a hard-hitting journalism. Well, when he was a young journalist in the 1950s, he interviewed William Carlos Williams and Mike Wallace is sort of a hard-ass tough guy questioner, famous catching you in 60 minutes, the old style. And he said to what he pulled out as if it were a politician catching a politician on some some FIB or something. He pulled out a poem, probably from Patterson in which Williams had made a list. And Mike Wallace said, well, if I submitted my laundry list of magazine publication, wouldn't that be a poem that was his rejoinder to Williams? The last I can't remember what William said in response. So that's a little like what's going on here. You almost want someone to challenge you that it's not art, so that you can turn ask them to define art. Okay, so how are we going to define art then? What happened when this went into a show and into a gallery became art, got signed? What happened to the conversation about art? What is art now? How did it change? Max, did it change? >> I don't know that it necessarily changed. There were just something about the institutionalization of art, I think it's revealed in this moment and with this object and I think that's why it's important for our purposes. When you have somebody with some measure of celebrity or two people with some measure of celebrity who do this sort of shocking da, da gesture and then you get somebody to then like sign off on it by putting it in their gallery or something, then you've created art, right? And then it's a way of thinking about, I think the way that institutional space really influences our perspective of art. I mean, we're talking about you mention them Walter and Louise, the folks who have the gallery. I mean, this is art, because they've sort of cosigned on it. They put the evened out this. They've collected, they've been down this gallery. It's in there now. And so by that nature is art. >> Okay, Anne Rose. >> Yeah, it's also interesting though, because I think this piece has had a couple of lives. If I remember when it was first when Duchamp first submitted it to something, it was rejected. It was rejected and it was smart. But yeah, it was it was actually that rejection of the institutionalization that made it so interesting for other artists. >> Yeah. >> And it was upon that rejection that it became really famous and that, that gesture of moving towards every day objects became more and more enticing. And then in its afterlife, then it becomes parts of galleries. And now, there are so many that are collected in all of these different places. So it's interesting how it's changed that relationship to its institutionalization has changed up time. >> Before we bring the Baroness into this, one more question about this in relation to a poem. So let's take the red wheelbarrow. So there, you've got a wheelbarrow and white chickens. Can someone draw the connection between that kind of a found pole, kind of a ready-made in the sense that you imagine the poet looking at a scene and then creating that juxtaposition out of a reality show is backyard? It's a rough thing. This is very specifically found ready-made. Is there a relationship between what Williams is doing and what Duchamp is doing, okay? >> Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think at least for our purposes as early as the women we've been thinking about, the language that already circulates in the world, the kind of plane objects of the every day. And incorporating those things into poetry and remembering that poetry doesn't come from like phantasm attic matter of that's like in your brain, but from the world. And so like the Williams is really just using a kind of plane object in a sort of in a plainly spoken and presented very simply, I think the ready-made is like a recognition of the fact that like images come from the world not from like a minor and idea. So that like if we remember that painting is literally made out of like chemical or substance, like a painting is not so cerebral thing. And this just feels like a recognition of that like taking a real that's in the world and reframing it as rather than like presenting say that it's an expression of some kind of like internal. >> So how in the wheelbarrow and chickens poem is their reframing going on? And how in the way that the urinal it becomes a piece of sculpture is the reframing going on. Yeah, for me, then maybe Alan will join. >> Yeah, I mean, with the red wheelbarrow, I think what's being presented as a kind of like perfect image that has no kind of the, I think of the ideal there is that it doesn't have a kind of like expressive quality or emotive quality. But is simply that image as it stands by using kind of plain language of simple form and a grammar that would be presentable without having too much like stylization. I think that's the idea and the idea here is bringing the object from wherever it exists bathroom, presumably. Signing it which is sort of that like the real etching of the frame and putting it in a gallery, and that's where the object kind of becomes enchanted with the things that make art good. >> Good, so the aesthetic is the issue here, right, when does something participate in the aesthetic and one of the signals is signing a peace. Another is still not sure about the wheelbarrow up O'Malley, but another is got a wheelbarrow. It's rained. It's very glistening and I get these chickens. I didn't put the chickens there. Chickens will go where they want to go, but I guess there was this moment. I mean, he didn't say, chickens moved a little to the left. He sort of found this scene and made it a tableau. Can you say a little more about that the chickens in the wheelbarrow? What is the reframing there? It's hard. >> I mean, something that we talked about a lot in discussing that poem is the word depends upon and just relation, right? So beside, so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow. Blah, blah, blah, beside the white chickens placement rain water beside the white chickens. Am I missing something? >> Nothing. >> That's great. And so like if we zoom out a little like so much depends upon this upside down urine or urinal being in a museum with an autograph, basically. >> I want it and I want to keep riffing the way Alex's been so much depends. But when you put the urinal up right way, if you're a urinal user which is a limitation, you are so much depends on that for sure. But then so much also depends on turning it over and signing it which is saying, what? What's that depend that dependency? What's the importance of that of the flipping it over? >> Well, so if you in the red and the video on the red wheelbarrow, I think we had them on where we put our thumbs over the so much depends upon. So if you if you don't have those first two lines, you just have like this perfect image like as Gab was describing. You just have the image, but what takes that poem from just an image to saying so much else is the inclusion of the so much depends upon. So just like that, the similar gesture here. I wrote a little ratio is the urinal depends on the fact that has been flipped and put into a gallery there. >> Yep. >> That's the thing that takes this from we just have a urinal to now we have a urinal that were being asked to think about in a totally different way. Just like we're not just being presented with the tableau. We're being asked to think about this dependence and that what depends upon this image as we've received it. What depends our ideas about art challenges to institutions as Max was saying. Ideas about authorship and ownership, right? This are mun is not M Duchamp or be Von Freitag. Larry Hogan e be fairness is your first name, right, and this idea that I think maybe Dave said this. I could do that great, go do it, right? Because you're being asked to not think about artists to singular genius recipe thing about artists as myself. >> So in one of the ready-made is poems. Thank you. One of the ready-made his poems by Williams, the plums poem. This is just to say, the refrigerator note. One of the topics of conversation is the recipient of that note. We know autobiographically that's Flossie Williams and something is at stake there, probably know chickens were harmed in the making of the other poem. Although we don't know that, but something was harmed. First of all, the domestic partner did not get the plums in the poem if it, in fact, happened the way it happened which Williams swears it did. Here the unoriginality, the sparkling magical unoriginality of fountain kind of depends on the story that to shop told somewhat fibbingly and then more fibbingly later that it was he who had found it or gotten it or come up with it. It turns out through some very recent art journalism that the baroness Elsa fun Freitag Laura Govan, someone we greatly respect in this course, but is pretty much otherwise unknown seems to have been the originator of this. So let's talk about the fact of it, because we've all read a little some articles about this, but let's talk about the fact of that discovery and then go further and talking about the baroness relationship to Duchamp as perhaps the Flossie Williams or the person who lost the plums relationship to Williams. So who wants to tell us Ali what happened? What did we find out about this? It's a scandal. >> Yeah, so classic case of a man taking credit for a woman's work and great ideas. Apparently, there there were, I mean, she had a history of kind of presenting these found objects. >> First of all, shared history of vandalism. She would like Steve she would take things. Okay, go ahead. >> And I this is very like hazy. I need some help with this, but there was some like connection with like the RMAT like. >> I think she was sheet was her signature. >> I think the document that there's been some research somebody found that he said it's like the he got the urinal from a female friend in Philly who had signed the urinal with RMAT and the baroness who had made a lot of ready-made objects pretty similar to this. It kind of fits in line other work was in Philly around the same time. >> So we me, Philadelphia. >> Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Philly and another sort of like possible evidences that RMAT seems to be a German pun on our modes like for poverty. I think is what I read. So there seems to be some things that that that said so-called female friend who gave him the fountain might have been the the baroness. And then later, he kind of was like I did myself. Really Davey, Emily wouldn't it have been better if Duchamp had simply said, this is so unoriginal that I got this from the baroness wouldn't that have >> He obviously did not for reasons that Alex's suggested. This is a kind of time-honored tradition, but to what extent does this call into question the whole ready-made idea? And of course, our interest is more in getting back to Williams in the idea of a poem that's ready-made which always requires some kind of theft. >> Yeah, I think I'm interested in what, I think Anna said earlier about like this gesture of the ready-made kind of like taking away the singular genius of the creator, but I don't really think that is the case. I think that there's there's some giving back of ownership to the viewer and the sense of like you're working a little harder to see that this is art, then you might be looking at like even an impressionistic painting where you're like, well, can clearly see that at least it's a painting here. Here you're like can I see that? This is a sculpture, I don't know. So there's that and it's there's also this thing of like well, I could go to the hardware store and buy your and also there's that. But still like once one person has done it, another person can't really do it. I can't bring a urinal turned upside down with- >> Well, will use improvement would really mean a whole lot different. >> Yeah and so there is still a singularity and a singular geniusness to it. And so I think the answer a question like what it happened better, like obviously I would want baroness to get like her credit for contributing to the idea. But I don't know that that actually goes along with what the piece is trying to say. I think the pieces trying to say like boom, deal with it and that's kind of more of a singular marriage- >> The deal with its, yeah. I think I was going to turn to Davey and Emily, is that right? >> Okay. So Davey, here's a question for you. Lou talking about the individual genius, which is a Hallmark of a lot of the modern posts that we study. Stein felt that way about herself for sure. Individual genius. Williams, explicitly Duchamp is a good example. So you have these that's the mode of the modern and the mode of the postmodern typically in this course, at least starting with week seven and going forward is more about whether it's genuinely felt or not is more about intersubjectivity, echoes, collaborative hearings, restatements, unoriginality. All that kind of community and collaborativeness. And so I think that I mean, Lilly's point is really, really good which is that this kind of depended on the individual genius. I did despite its radicalism in saying, I don't own this. I didn't make it. So it kind of a contradiction of individualism and I can take something from the hardware store, and make it into art, and that really the people who made the urine whatever the company is there the people who made it, and I collaborated with them. How do you feel about that Paradox? It does get worked out in thankfully and where we supposed tree, but this Is modernism it's big deal. >> I think the Paradox operates really differently depending on who we think of as the person who produced this artwork and the way that we do with the narratives around it that Duchamp's narrative is such a narrative of original genius. But this for me is a really different work of art, if it's made by a woman identified person and made by women identified person who is a non urinal using person that urinal using. >> Yes and non-urinal using person. >> And I think that like that's a really different gesture to say like here's this thing for my quotidian life. We're like a shovel in a urinal or kind of the same like I would use this thing whenever to do this thing I need to do. And in the baron's this case, she wouldn't use the shovel, either. Sure. >> [LAUGH] >> She doesn't go to a hardware store shovel someone's driveway in the suburbs. >> Sure, what a presently disputing the shelve. So but as a non-urinal using person, it shifts the gaze of the like spectacular lack of utility of this thing. >> Yes. >> And for me, becomes resonant with her in dialogue with questions of who's gotten to put whose body on display. And I think that, that would have been history that would have been very available to her thinking about the freak show, thinking about the commodification of marginalized bodies by people in power for their economic gain and it's part of that history for me to of thinking about who's experienced we get to think of is weird. Here's this thing that's like totally normal for a assigned male at birth person to use and we're going to look at it as though, it's like kind of crazy looking. And that to me feels like a radical gesture that becomes really different if we understand the history of this is an object made by a woman rather than an object made by myself to show. >> Emily, I want to turn to you, but I'm going to throw out a little factoid which is that in the Walter and Louie's arms-berg room. You can see the urinal. Sometimes, it's not there. It's been lent out, but I think most of the times there and across the room is a sculpture by the Barons called God and we have a video about we've made we made a video about seven years ago about God by the baroness and it's in mud. It's about God it and it's in Mokpo plus and I highly recommend it, because it really had this you look at that video, you look at God at that piece of plumbing and you- >> Think you bad, right? >> It's a you bet and she stuck it to a base of some kind, and it's very similar gesture. It really is plumbing to, plumbing. Emily, a literary art critic named John Higgs wrote The Following Fountain. This piece is Base Cruel conference crew crude. That's a crow base crude confrontational and funny. Those are not typical aspects of Duchamp's work, but they summarize the baroness and her are perfectly in other words. Our criticism could have figured this out simply in with the close reading of the piece. This is not to shop and at all. Anyway, you can react to that or anything else. >> Yeah, I just think it's really interesting instead of questions. It raises about iconoclasm and the way iconoclasm can be leveraged to actually increase in artist social capital if they already sort of have social capital, right? If there are already a man, right the way that it can shore up their individual genius. Whereas clearly, I wonder if for the baroness of her iconoclasm is actually what kept her marginal. And so thinking about this piece in conjunction with the baroness is a great way to ask those questions, what sort of confrontational like weirdness really does for people and what are the other conditions which makes that succeed? And now when I think he sort of people's pop culture idea of what a modern artist is of a sort of prestigious artist, it probably would be something kind of like this. Someone does weird things and expect them to be received in a sort of art like sacredness. And that's clearly something which was possible for Duchamp, but not for the baroness. And yeah, it makes for a really interesting conversation. >> And this was an interesting conversation. Thank you all. This was very good.
