R. Mutt never existed—but that was exactly the point. When Duchamp submitted Fountain to the Society of Independent Artists in 1917 under that fake name, he wasn’t just playing a joke. He was testing the system. The exhibition claimed to accept all works, yet when faced with a porcelain urinal turned on its back and signed like an artwork, they rejected it. Turns out, “everything is welcome” had its limits.

But Fountain wasn’t just about rebellion. It was a question thrown at the art world: What actually makes something art? The artist’s hand? The idea behind it? The space it’s shown in? By taking an everyday object and forcing people to see it differently, Duchamp cracked open a debate that still shapes how we think about art today. R. Mutt was never real, but the shift he sparked was.

Marcel Duchamp Fountain, 1917, photograph by Alfred Stieglitz at 291 art gallery following the 1917 Society of Independent Artists exhibit, with entry tag visible. The backdrop is The Warriors by Marsden Hartley.