Fountain II (Buddha)

Date1996

Maker Sherrie Levine American, born 1947

Label TextIn this new piece Levine works with marcel Duchamp's infamous 1917 sculpture Fountain. Duchamp purchased a J. L. Mott Iron Works porcelain urinal at a hardware store, set it on its back, and signed it "R. Mutt." When the New York Society of Independent Artists refused to exhibit the piece, Alfred Stieglitz photographed it for his avant-garde art magazine, The Blind Mab. Louise Norton wrote an accompanying essay, praising Fountain's "pleasant" formal qualities and comparing its "chaste simplicity" to the lines of "a lovely Buddha." Duchamp introduced the idea of the "ready-made": a mass-produced found object that he chose to display as his own art. Building on Duchamp's ironic challenge to the notion of artistic originality, Levine uses Duchamp's art as HER "ready-made." She produced her version in highly polished cast bronze, creating a sensuous objet with aesthitic affinities to Brancusi. Duchamp's original Fountain is lost, but it lives on in the various replicas he made during his life.

Object number97.40

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Wash., Seattle Art Museum, Elles: SAM-Singular Works by Seminal Women Artists, Oct. 06, 2012-Feb. 17, 2013. Seattle, Wash., Seattle Art Museum, "Anne Gerber Biennial: 2000 1/2: going forward looking back", May 8, 2000 - August 4, 2000 Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College Museum of Art, "Undomesticated Interiors", October 17, 2003 - January 18, 2004 Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, "Five Installations on the Fourth Floor: Varieties of Sculpture"

Credit LineSeattle Artfair and Margaret E. Fuller Purchase Fund

Dimensions19 x 16 x 14 in. (48.26 x 40.64 x 35.56 cm) 69 lb 15.9 oz (31.75 kg)

MediumBronze