I argue that, despite the vast philosophical and art-historical literature on Duchamp's Fountain, close attention to historical evidence reveals that at heart of the practice of art around the 1910s lay an overlooked paradox—an apparently valid argument, with apparently true but overlooked premises, to the then apparently absurd conclusion that Fountain is a work of art. In response to it, I identify solutions that can be inferred from leading theories of art. Then I show that such solutions rely on the widespread and never disputed assumption that there is, and has always been since the 1910s, a fact of the matter about whether Fountain is a work of art. If this assumption is false, I argue, a new kind of solution emerges and with it new possibilities about the extent to which a revolution can change the practice of art.

中文翻译：

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  杜尚悖论

我认为，尽管有大量关于杜尚的喷泉的哲学和艺术史文献，但对历史证据的密切关注表明，1910 年代左右艺术实践的核心存在一个被忽视的悖论——一个看似有效的论点，具有明显真实但被忽视的前提，与当时显然荒谬的结论相呼应，即喷泉是一件艺术品。作为回应，我确定了可以从领先的艺术理论中推断出的解决方案。然后我表明，这样的解决方案依赖于一个广泛且从未有争议的假设，即存在并且自 1910 年代以来一直存在一个关于喷泉是否是艺术作品的事实。我认为，如果这个假设是错误的，那么一种新的解决方案就会出现，随之而来的是关于革命可以在多大程度上改变艺术实践的新可能性。