Duchamp and the pissoir-taking sexual politics of the art world
The woman who may have been the real genius of Duchamp's urinal exemplifies a culture that assumes risk-taking to be a male preserve
Poet, artist and wearer of tin cans Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven: 'That she has been written out of the story [of Duchamp's Fountain] is not only a great injustice, it is a formidable loss to art history.' Photograph: APIC
Men may fill them, but it takes a woman to take the piss out of a urinal. Or so Julian Spalding, the former director of Glasgow Museums, and the academic Glyn Thompson have claimed. The argument, which has been swooshing around the cistern of contemporary art criticism since the 1980s, is that Duchamp's famous artwork Fountain – a pissoir laid on its side – was actually the creation of the poet, artist and wearer of tin cans,Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. That Von Freytag-Loringhoven has been written out of the story is not only a great injustice, it is also a formidable loss to art history. This was a woman, after all, whose idea of getting gussied-up for a private view was to scatter her outfit liberally with flattened tin cans and stuffed parrots. A woman who danced on verandas in little more than a pair of stockings, some feathers and enough bangles to shake out the percussion track from Walk Like an Egyptian. A woman who draped her way through several open marriages, including one to Oscar Wilde's translator Felix Paul Greve (who faked his own suicide to escape his creditors and flee with her to America). A woman who had her poems published in journals alongside excerpts from Ulysses. In short, the sort of woman that female artists today need as a role model
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