Marcel Duchamp

Biography

Famous Dada artist who shocked the world when he submitted a urinal signed "R.Mutt" to the 1917 first exhibition of the American Society of Independent Artists at the Armory Show in New York. It was reported in a press account that (Duchamp under pseudonym) J.C. Mutt of Philadelphia, little known in artistic circles, heard that payment of five dollars would permit him to send to the exhibition a work of art of any description or degree of excellence he might see fit. He complied by shipping from Quaker City a familiar article of bathroom furniture by a well known firm of that town. By the same mail went a five dollar bill. And a urinal became a "work of art". Duchamp appears in the film Entr'acte (1924) playing an absurd game of chess (his favorite, by the way) against Man Ray.