1. Fountain, 1917

The day Marcel Duchamp presented an ordinary porcelain urinal to an art exhibition, he intentionally transformed an object meant to be pissed in into a work of art. Its shape remained unchanged, its position was reoriented to 90 degrees, but its function and meaning were totally redefined: no longer to be used, but to be seen, no longer ordinary, but extraordinary. Its aura changed. Then, it is quite fascinating to discover that decades later, several performance artists, including Pierre Pinoncelli, urinated into Fountain’s replicas, as if their act not only carried forward Duchamp’s legacy of artistic provocations, but also, in an ironic twist, restored the sculpture to its original function.