Authorial Punning, Made Manifest

Few works in 20th-century art history have been as dissected, discussed, and duplicated as Fountain—a porcelain urinal submitted to the 1917 Society of Independent Artists exhibition under the name "R. Mutt."

The Gesture: Authorial Punning

Before Fountain, pseudonyms in art were rare. Artists might obscure a
signature, but they rarely erased their identity from the work entirely.
Duchamp did more than withhold authorship—he replaced it.
"R. Mutt" wasn’t an alias in the usual sense; it was a cancellation.
The name mocked origin and intention, detaching the object from its
maker with surgical precision. This was not anonymity for anonymity’s sake.
It was strategy. And it was not the first time Duchamp had done it.

The Precedent: Morée

If Morée is indeed by Duchamp, it represents the true origin of this gesture.
There, the signature was not merely fabricated—it was physically damaged. Scraped, abraded, sabotaged. Morée doesn’t just
withhold authorship—it actively destroys it. Fountain carries that idea forward into the public sphere. Where Morée withheld identity through gesture and disguise, Fountain turned it into a statement: authorship is a game, and names are masks.

Why It Matters

Fountain is the first known Dada artwork after Morée to encode Authorial Punning as a primary act. It reframes artistic identity not as a given, but as a lever. The signature is no longer proof of origin—it is now a tool of subversion. This is the gesture that would later ripple into Rrose Sélavy and the crossed-out signatures in works by Jasper Johns. But Fountain is the hinge.

A Public Gesture, A Private Code

It’s easy to read Fountain as a joke, a prank, or an icon of readymade culture. But when seen in the context of Morée, it takes on new meaning. It is the next move in a conversation already underway. The name "R. Mutt" wasn’t the beginning. It was the reply.