Readymade

A readymade is an ordinary manufactured object designated and presented as art. Its artistic status comes chiefly from selection and presentation rather than from traditional craft.

Marcel Duchamp: A French-American artist whose work reshaped modern art, including through his use of readymades. He named and exhibited everyday objects as art, establishing the form’s most influential examples.
Artistic appropriation: The reuse of existing images, objects, or styles in the creation of art. A readymade appropriates a manufactured object by redirecting its context and meaning.
Assisted readymade: A readymade altered or combined with other objects or materials by the artist. Duchamp used this term for works that depart from simply selecting an untouched object.
Andy Warhol: An American artist associated with Pop art, celebrity imagery, and the use of commercial production methods. His Brillo Boxes revisited the boundary between ordinary products and exhibited art.
Fountain (Duchamp): A 1917 artwork by Marcel Duchamp consisting of a urinal signed “R. Mutt.” Its rejection by an art exhibition made the readymade’s challenge to institutional judgment explicit.
Found object: An existing object incorporated into an artwork rather than made specifically for it. Readymades are a historically specific form of art made from found objects.
Assemblage: A three-dimensional artwork made by combining found objects and materials. Assemblage constructs a composition from objects, whereas a pure readymade can involve selection alone.
Brillo Boxes: Andy Warhol’s 1964 sculptures reproducing the appearance of Brillo soap-pad cartons. They renewed the question of why a store carton and its gallery counterpart count differently.
Bicycle Wheel: A 1913 artwork by Marcel Duchamp combining a bicycle wheel and fork mounted on a stool. Duchamp’s first assisted readymade turned an everyday object into an object for contemplation.
Conceptual art: Art in which ideas or concepts take precedence over the production of a conventional art object. Readymades make the artist’s decision central, anticipating art centered on ideas.

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