John Baldessari, Untitled (Urinal)

2002

This bright purple, mass-produced ceramic urinal basin (or bedpan/sanitary fixture), is part of a series in which Baldessari produces an ironic conceptual homage to Marcel Duchamp’s groundbreaking 1917 readymade Fountain. The work plays with the dual meaning of "fountain" as both a classical art structure (and Duchamp's pseudonym-signed urinal) and a literal plumbing fixture. The underside and the front of each basin is scrawled / screened with the declaration: "THE ARTIST IS A FOUNTAIN".