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In 1917, Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal to the first annual exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists here in New York under the pseudonym R. Mutt. Duchamp was one of the founding members of this organization, along with Walter Arensberg, Katherine Dreier, Man Ray, and Joseph Stella. This society was founded with the intention of providing a platform for individual artists to showcase their work, whether new, experienced, experimental, or avant-garde, and was dedicated to advancing the ideas of independent artists, free of juries, prizes, or ranking of any kind. As long as one paid the entry fee of six dollars, one's work would be shown. The first annual exhibition included over 2,000 works of art. The catalog was organized and the exhibition hung in alphabetical order by the artists' last names to ensure equal treatment. Yet shortly before the opening, the society refused to show Mutt's (Duchamp') Fountain. Apparently the Society of Independent Artists was not as open to new ideas of art as one would have liked to believe. Once Duchamp proved this, he soon resigned from his position as a director.
A similar event occurred in France before Duchamp moved to New York in 1915. In fact, the Society of Independent Artists was modeled after the French Société des Artistes Indépendants, who in 1912 held their twenty-eighth exhibition. Duchamp submitted Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), to be hung with the cubist work. Although the cubists were the innovative movement of their time, they developed a strict set of rules for themselves, and while Nude contained the fragmentation, synthesis, and muted colors associated with cubism, the movement in the piece was said to be of futurist influence. Duchamp, however, has often stated that he was not aware of the futurist movement at that time. Cubist images were to be static/fixed. Even the title was under attack, being too literary. Duchamp's brothers, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon, were sent to break the n