Marcel Duchamp

In 1917, at an open art exhibition, Marcel Duchamp submitted a Urnial, Signed "R. MUTT", to the exhibition. Controversialy, it wasn't rejected as 'not art' — Which, you know, isn't. Unless you were a 'Dadaist' or whatnot.

So heres the thing: I don't think it was art either. Why is this moment so famous, so well known? It's because it's one of the first recorded cases of what we now know as 'Stirring' or 'Trolling'. Is there a case earlier of an artist messing with the establishment in such an overt way? can someone out there tell me about it?

I think Duchamp was just stirring the pot so that he could garner more fame, which he did, even though he was already doing well before the war. Pretty funny that he later had a really good grasp on the fact that he, simply, had just made a BS statement. He said much later:

This Neo-Dada, which they call New Realism, Pop Art, Assemblage, etc., is an easy way out, and lives on what Dada did. When I discovered the ready-mades I sought to discourage aesthetics. In Neo-Dada they have taken my readymades and found aesthetic beauty in them, I threw the bottle-rack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty.

So in other words: I was just messing with you guys. Get over it. Go away.

More over, I'm going to try and find more people who wanted to mess with the establishment like Duchamp did, and got some just desserts out of it.