This is literally just people speculating. He definitely made replicas of it later but the official story is the original piece known as Fountain (which eventually was lost) was a standard urinal purchased at a New York hardware store (J L Mott Ironworks).
And whether or not he actually made it is kind of besides the point. Like the whole point of Fountain is it demonstrates that it doesn’t actually matter who the specific individual is who made the physical manifestation of the object which represents the artwork. Like even if he never made replicas of it, even if we knew with 100% certainty that he literally just bought a urinal and submitted it to an art show that “accepts all submissions” just to see if they really would accept it, it would not diminish its quality as an artwork at all. On the contrary, it would only better serve the point it’s trying to make.
This is literally just people speculating. He definitely made replicas of it later but the official story is the original piece known as Fountain (which eventually was lost) was a standard urinal purchased at a New York hardware store (J L Mott Ironworks).
And whether or not he actually made it is kind of besides the point. Like the whole point of Fountain is it demonstrates that it doesn’t actually matter who the specific individual is who made the physical manifestation of the object which represents the artwork. Like even if he never made replicas of it, even if we knew with 100% certainty that he literally just bought a urinal and submitted it to an art show that “accepts all submissions” just to see if they really would accept it, it would not diminish its quality as an artwork at all. On the contrary, it would only better serve the point it’s trying to make.