Marcel Duchamp and the urinal that changed art
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
In October 1942, the great French conceptualist artist Marcel Duchamp helped put on the first major surrealist exhibition in New York.
Carroll Janis's parents were friends of Duchamp.
Louise Hidalgo spoke to him in October 2016 about the exhibition, the man and his art, including his famous urinal, Fountain.
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(Photo: Duchamp’s famous urinal. Credit: Michael Macor/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:38.5 | Hello and welcome to witness history. If you're new to us, we're the podcast that takes |
| 0:43.4 | you back to a moment in history by speaking to those who are there. |
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| 0:54.6 | and turn your push notifications on? We're going back to October 1942 and the first major |
| 1:01.8 | exhibition of surrealist art in New York. It was designed by one of the most influential |
| 1:07.1 | artistic minds of the 20th century, the French artist Marcel Duchamp. |
| 1:12.6 | In 2016, Louise Hidalgo spoke to Carol Janice, who played a part in the exhibition. |
| 1:19.1 | Be aware that this episode includes archive that uses language of the time. |
| 1:24.6 | It's October 1942, and in a large 19th century mansion in central Manhattan, |
| 1:30.1 | a group of some of the most celebrated avant-garde artists of the age are mounting an exhibition. |
| 1:35.5 | But this is no ordinary exhibition of paintings hung on walls. |
| 1:48.4 | At their last exhibition in Paris a few years earlier, |
| 1:52.4 | the surrealist poet Andre Breton and the artist Marcel Duchamp had hung sacks of coal from the ceiling |
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