marcel duchamps developed the term "readymade" in 1915 to refer to found objects chosen by the artist as art.he had arrived in the United States less than two years previously and was teaching French to earn a living. Accompanied by the artist Joseph Stella and art collector Walter Arensberg he purchased a standard Bedfordshire model urinal from the J.L. Mott Iron Works, 118 Fifth Avenue. When the urinal was in his studio at 33 West 67th Street, he turned it 90 degrees from its normal position, and wrote on it "R. Mutt 1917". This was not to create an aesthetic experience but to make a conceptual statement.Like the use of the word "Dada" for the art movement, the meaning (if any) and intention of the signature "R. Mutt" is difficult to pin down precisely and seems playfully intended to be ambivalent and multi-faceted. "Mutt" is a close reference to the vendor "Mott". Mutt and Jeff was a popular contemporary comic strip. It is not clear whether Duchamp had in mind the German "armut" (meaning poverty), but he did state that the initial "R" stood for "Richard", which is slang in French for "moneybags".Duchamp was a board member of the Society of Independent Artists and submitted the piece to their "unjuried" 1917 exhibition, which, it had been proclaimed, would exhibit all work submitted. Duchamp's entry was immediately rejected as "not being art" (and he resigned from the board shortly afterwards). Duchamp then took Fountain to Alfred Stieglitz's gallery, 291 Fifth Avenue, which was about to show the work of the then-unknown Georgia O'Keefe. Stieglitz used a backdrop of The Warriors by Marsden Hartley to photograph the urinal. The exhibition entry tag can be clearly seen (it also has "R.Mutt" written on it). Shortly thereafter the original Fountain was lost, and years later Duchamp commissioned reproductions to be made of the piece.In December 2004, Duchamp's Fountain was voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century by 500 selected British artworld professionals
