We recently read the Jacquelynn Baas essay
Before Zen : The Nothing of American Dada with it's further consideration of the ...Duchamp/Mutt/
Wood/Steiglitz/Norton... 'Fountain'.
When the jurors of The Society of Independent Artists firmly rushed to remove the bit of sculpture called the Fountain sent in by Richard Mutt, because the object was irrevocably associated in their atavistic minds with a certain natural function of a secretive sort.
detail
Alfred Stieglitz, photograph of Marcel Duchamp’s
Fountain, as published in Beatrice Wood, The Blind Man, No. 2,
May 1917.
Philadelphia Museum of Art,
The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection.
When the jurors of The Society of Independent Artists firmly rushed to remove the bit of sculpture called the Fountain sent in by Richard Mutt, because the object was irrevocably associated in their atavistic minds with a certain natural function of a secretive sort.
Yet to any ‘innocent’ eye how pleasant is its chaste simplicity of line and color! Someone said, ‘Like a lovely Buddha’; someone said, ‘Like the legs of the ladies by Cézanne’; but have they not, those ladies, in their long, round nudity always recalled to your mind the calm curves of decadent plumbers’ porcelains?
At least as a touchstone of Art how valuable it might have been! If it be true, as Gertrude Stein says, that pictures that are right stay right, consider, please, on one side of a work of art with excellent references from the Past, the Fountain, and on the other almost anyone of the majority of pictures now blushing along the miles of wall in the Grand Central Palace of ART. Do you see what I mean?
And more such (from wikipedia) :
In a letter dated 23 April 1917, Stieglitz wrote of the photograph he took of Fountain: "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."[2][25]
In 1918, Mercure de France published an article attributed to Guillaume Apollinaire stating Fountain, originally titled
"le Bouddha de la salle de bain" (Buddha of the bathroom), represented a sitting Buddha.[26]
. . . .
It all reminded us of this 'wall-gazing Daruma' scroll by the Zen master Nantembō (1839–1925).
In a letter dated 23 April 1917, Stieglitz wrote of the photograph he took of Fountain: "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."[2][25]
In 1918, Mercure de France published an article attributed to Guillaume Apollinaire stating Fountain, originally titled
"le Bouddha de la salle de bain" (Buddha of the bathroom), represented a sitting Buddha.[26]
. . . .
Since the photograph taken by Stieglitz is the only image of the original sculpture, there are some interpretations of Fountain by looking not only at reproductions but this particular photograph. Tomkins notes
"Arensberg had referred to a 'lovely form' and it does not take much stretching of the imagination to see in the upside-down urinal's gently flowing curves the veiled head of a classic Renaissance Madonna or a seated Buddha or, perhaps more to the point, one of Brâncuși's polished erotic forms."[1][42]
It all reminded us of this 'wall-gazing Daruma' scroll by the Zen master Nantembō (1839–1925).
collection : FIAPCE
The inscription as translated by John Stevens :
The form of our Grand patriarch
facing the wall in meditation
or is it a tasty melon or an eggplant
or is it a tasty melon or an eggplant
from around here in Yahata?
(signed)
(signed)
Eighty-five-year-old Nantembo Toju
Theatre of the Actors of Regard
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...
LOGOS/HA HA
