I was fortunate enough in recent travels to find myself in Philadelphia with several hours to kill before getting on a flight back home. Having a deep familial connection to the City of Brotherly Love, I knew a number of things that could easily occupy my time among the worn stone buildings and the ubiquitous rainy grey. Of the options before me, one stood clear above the rest, and before long I decided that I had just enough time to explore one of my favorite places in the world: The Philadelphia Museum of Art.

There was a piece in particular I had wanted to see in person for a few years, and knowing it was housed and displayed at PMoA, I grabbed a museum map and made a direct route for it. I was, admittedly, completely giddy to see it in person. The piece had absolutely shaken the Art world upon its debut, and the polarized discourse that surrounds it has never waned. Everything that anybody could ever say about the piece had been said, and yet I couldn’t tell what I was going to think, what I was going to feel. It was pure excitement, a rush one only gets from the knowledge that they are about to lay eyes on something truly unique and special. 

The piece I was utterly excited to be dumbstruck by was Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”, a 1917 sculptural work consisting of nothing more than a normal urinal. Duchamp presented the piece alongside other “readymades”, or ordinary objects presented as works of art, attempting to highlight the aspects of artistic design that surround us in our everyday lives. By presenting this urinal as Art, Duchamp hoped to expand the public consciousness’ perceptions about what is or is not Art, highlighting the act of inspired design that went into the modeling and creation of something we generally think of as filthy or unclean. 

The floor map told me I was maybe 100 yards from the right room, and there it would be waiting in all its glory: a normal urinal on a white pedestal inside of one of the United States’ most prestigious Art museums. In the museum setting, you can’t help but treat it as true sculpture. 

It occurred to me as I rushed through the hall, intent on viewing other works on my way back, that the museum housed Van Goghs and Monets just down the hall, and that the room I stood in was just a floor above original Rothkos and Rembrandts. Yet here I was, shirking it all to reach the target of my visit: 

A pisspot. 

The juxtaposition set upon me like a gunshot. I passed the works of masters to come and stare at a pisspot. The finest works of monochromatic minimalism laid to canvas. Genuine of-the-time portraits of the Founding Fathers. The collected successes of various experimentalists, boundary-pushers, and trailblazers all fit to the brim in one single building in Philadelphia, and I had come here with the sole intention to look at a pisspot. 

I had considered this to be Duchamp’s big joke, played for over 100 years since the piece debuted: Members of the Art crowd could be made to be excited to see a urinal, and I was far from the first to be so. I’d read for years about Fountain, considered it from every angle I could find behind a computer screen, tossed it over as a troubling and vaguely insulting piece that my young mind simply could not wrap itself around. I’d come to revere Fountain, in all its porcelain plainness, as the original “punk rock” act in the world of Art, a move that was equal parts transgressive intentions and avant-garde taste: He wants you to think it sucks so he can proudly declare just how wrong you are. 

As much as Fountain is an elevation of everyday objects to the reverence of artworks, it is also a full-throated challenge to art audiences, demanding they prove that they can think outside of their self-made boxes of taste and see the artistry present in the design of a public-use urine receptacle. Given that in the century since its unveiling it has led to an unbelievable amount of discourse and analysis, It might be safe to say that Duchamp’s central thesis was brutally correct, and has since been vindicated by time. 

As I rounded the corner into the gallery room I had been looking for, my heart sank. There was a security guard standing in front of yellow “Do-Not-Cross” tape, covering the entrance to the only room I cared about seeing. I ask the guard why the room is closed off. He kindly informs me that they’re doing renovation work, repainting the walls and restoring the display spaces. I thanked him for the information and left, having not observed the sacred trough. I was despondent, absolutely dejected. I spent extra time around the Rothkos to make me feel better. Unsurprisingly, it did not help. 

As I got in the Taxi  to the airport, it dawned on me, the way a sledgehammer dawns on drywall: This was Duchamp’s final joke. An extension of the one he intended, yes, but evolved to fit my particular experience: I was upset that I didn’t get to stare at a urinal. I felt, all at once, so stupid. How could I ever be such a sucker to want to look at a urinal, in spite of how well I knew it to be chosen as a particularly unspecial urinal, fit to a pedestal as a great subversion. Yet, I could not shake the feeling that this was all according to plan: By now, I had spent time considering and  placing an unbelievable importance upon a urinal that was meant to highlight the banal ubiquity of good design. Could I not then have the same excitement staring at any given urinal I encounter? Was Duchamp not getting one over on me by tricking me into thinking this particular discarded urinal was any more special than the ones I see and use with regularity? More to the point, was he not laughing at me for buying into that whole “this urinal is actually special” shtick? It was like a wrestler had, for a brief moment against my better judgement, convinced me that pro wrestling is real. But the kayfabe was now broken and the illusory nature of Fountain was starting to seep in: It was a ruse, a trick, a hex on the mind of the viewer to believe it was a special urinal. Deep in my mind, rattling down my spine, I could hear a distinctly French laughter, and I knew Marcel had gotten the last laugh over me. Stunned, I conceded to the ghost of the master.

The car arrived at the airport entrance. I stepped out, grabbed my bags from the trunk, still vaguely disappointed yet somewhat at ease. It was somewhere around when I stood in line for security that I came to appreciate the magic trick at the middle of it all: This urinal was special because someone said it was, and he managed to convince the rest of us that it was at least worth talking about. 

I believe this is what’s at the core of all Art: It is powered by belief. These images, these sounds, these objects, they mean nothing until someone says they do, and when they do, it becomes impossible to go back. No matter how strange, insufficient, or repulsive something can be, all it takes is an artist to direct you to think of it as special, and a deep part of your mind now has difficulty in believing it couldn’t be. Once you have made enough people believe this, you have cemented it as stone-cold fact. Duchamp’s Fountain is the most-discussed urinal in all of human history, and as ridiculous as it sounds, it is a borderline undisprovable fact Go ahead, name another. 

This is the closest thing to magic that the artist wields: The ability to change how we see the world we walk through. Minute by minute, trick by trick, urinal by urinal. 

I finished a whiskey double, boarded the plane, and sat back, thinking of Art and smiling at nothing in particular.