The Fountain Gender

The basics of feminist and queer theory can be described with one word: identity. The modern society had created ‘normal’ gender identities and those who did not fit the ideal male model were thought of as lesser models of humans. With a blurring of these social norms, The Fountain can be labeled as a feminist and genderqueer piece even if Duchamp had never considered it to be one.

Modernism in the United States painted a much different picture than their avant-garde neighbors across the pond. Most of American modernism or post-modernism was focused around establishing a true American identity rather than to update an old one because there was not much of a history to update. Most Europeans did not feel the same need to establish themselves

Gender binaries, male and female, were seen as social constructs that were influenced by ideas and values. With the rise of modernist values encouraging this fluidity, the previous definition of gender became less tangible and the desires of the individual surpassed those of the group. Although a person may be born with female sex organs, they may identify with males in a social construct. The terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ split off and developed different definitions entirely. Sex referred to a person’s physical attributes and gender referred to a person’s socially-constructed roles, which may not be the same. ‘Male’ and ‘female’ describes sex while ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ describes gender. Although ‘queer theory’ did not exist until the 1990s, these challenges to socially constructed gender identities allowed for those outside society’s definitions of an ideal citizen to be able to have a

Born in Paris, France, Duchamp moved to New York in 1915 and became an American citizen before he passed away, choosing a nationality that had nothing to do with societal definition. In addition, Duchamp also became fluid in his different styles of art, experimenting with different ‘isms’ such as surrealism or a loose version of Dadaism. He did not tie himself down to one specific style or movement throughout his career, allowing his works to be art because he deemed it so instead of critics or rigid boundaries of past art styles. Although Duchamp was an “unwavering heterosexual male”, he was also sympathetic of homosexuals and females, allowing his work to transcend the typical “male”