sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
Morton Livingston Schamberg
Morton Livingston Schamberg (October 15, 1881 – October 13, 1918) was an American modernist painter and photographer. He was one of the first American artists to explore the aesthetic qualities of industrial subjects.. Schamberg is consid ...
and
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (née Else Hildegard Plötz; (12 July 1874 – 14 December 1927) was a German-born avant-garde visual artist and poet, who was active in Greenwich Village, New York, from 1913 to 1923, where her radical self ...
.''God'', Morton Livingston Schamberg and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Philadelphia Museum of Art /ref> It is an example of readymade art, a term coined by
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
in 1915 to describe his found objects. ''God'' is a 10½ inch high
cast iron
Cast iron is a class of iron–carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impuriti ...
plumbing trap
In plumbing, a trap is a U-shaped portion of pipe designed to trap liquid or gas to prevent unwanted flow; most notably sewer gases from entering buildings while allowing waste materials to pass through. In oil refineries, traps are used to p ...
turned upside down and mounted on a wooden
mitre box
A mitre box or miter box (American English) is a wood working appliance used to guide a hand saw for making precise cuts, usually 45° mitre cuts. Traditional mitre boxes are simple in construction and made of wood, while adjustable mitre boxes a ...
. The work is now in the Arensberg Collection in the
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...
.
It is now compared to Marcel Duchamp's famous ''
Fountain
A fountain, from the Latin "fons" (genitive "fontis"), meaning source or Spring (hydrology), spring, is a decorative reservoir used for discharging water. It is also a structure that jets water into the air for a decorative or dramatic effect. ...
'' sculpture which consists of an upended
urinal
A urinal (, ) is a sanitary plumbing fixture for urination only. Urinals are often provided in public toilets for male users in Western countries (less so in Muslim countries). They are usually used in a standing position. Urinals can be with ...
. Both works were created in the same year and there is some uncertainty about who first had the idea of turning plumbing into art. Duchamp and the Baroness were friends and she later made a found-object portrait of Duchamp.
''God'' was originally solely attributed to artist Morton Livingston Schamberg. The Philadelphia Museum of Art now recognizes the Baroness as a co-artist of this piece. However, according to the scholar
Francis Naumann Francis M. Naumann (born April 25, 1948) is a scholar, curator, and art dealer, specializing in the art of the Dada movement and the Surrealist periods. He has an MFA degree in painting from the Art Institute of Chicago (1973) and a PhD in art hist ...
, it is reasonable to conclude, based on the works known to have been made by her, that the Baroness most likely came up with the concept of combining the two elements of the sculpture and provided the title, while Schamberg assembled and photographed the piece.