CONTROVERSY OVER DUCHAMP FOUNTAINS
The Economist’s Sarah Thornton reports that forty years after Duchamp’s death, several unauthorized editions of the artist’s Fountain, 1917, have been discovered circulating in Italy.
While the original Fountain was either lost or destroyed, Duchamp authorized curators to purchase urinals in his name in 1950, 1953, and 1963. Then in 1964, in association with Arturo Schwarz, a Milan art dealer, historian, and collector, Duchamp issued twelve replicas (an edition of eight with four proofs) of his most important readymades, including the urinal. Schwarz, now eighty-six, went on to write the artist’s catalogue raisonné. Each of the Schwarz urinals is a carefully crafted earthenware sculpture modeled on Alfred Stieglitz’s iconic photo of the “original.” (A thirteenth Fountain, the “prototype” for the others and bearing Duchamp’s signature, was purchased by the Greek-Cypriot collector Dakis Joannou for $65,750 from Sotheby’s 1987 sale of Andy Warhol’s estate.)
According to Thornton’s report, there are at least three more “Duchamp urinals.” Gio di Maggio, a collector whose Fondazione Mudima is in Milan, and Luisella Zignone, a Duchamp collector based in Biella, both have Fountains that Schwarz says he gave as gifts. Sergio Casoli, a Milan dealer, is also thought to own one, though he declined to comment to The Economist.
Schwarz claims that these works were made in 1964 under Duchamp’s direction, but were not included in the original edition due to “imperfections.” None of the newly discovered pieces have the “Marcel Duchamp” signature of official readymades. Nevertheless, the Fountains owned by Di Maggio and Zignone have been shown in public institutions in Basel and Buenos Aires. In interview, Schwarz reluctantly confirmed that he is trying to sell a fourth Fountain for an undisclosed sum, which one source says is $2.5 million. (When pressed, Schwarz says the asking price depends on whether the purchaser is a museum, a well-reputed collector or a speculator.)
Jacqueline Matisse Monnier, the head of the Association for the Protection and Conservation of works by Marcel Duchamp, says that “neither my mother nor I ever sanctioned the sale of unauthorized readymades.” (Monnier’s mother, “Teeny,” was married to Pierre Matisse, the dealer son of Henri, before she married Duchamp, making her an heir to both the Henri Matisse and Duchamp estates.) She sees Schwarz’s activities as curious given that “Arturo was a great friend of Marcel.”
Some Duchamp connoisseurs are outraged. Francis M. Naumann, a scholar and dealer who has published widely on Duchamp, argues that these urinals cannot be considered Duchamps at all. “For Duchamp, the signature was everything,” he argues. “It is the single most important element in the process of transforming an ordinary everyday object into a work of art.”
Others appear more ambivalent. Daniella Luxembourg, co-owner of Luxembourg & Dayan, a New York gallery that recently held a Duchamp mini-retrospective, says the artist’s market has “the atmosphere of relics in a religion,” adding that “with globalization, the differences between what was signed by Duchamp and what was in his vicinity will become smaller and smaller.” Thornton wonders whether Duchamp might not be amused by the way these questionable Fountains muddy the waters of his current market. “My production,” he once said, “has no right to be speculated upon.”
