readymade

Readymades are everyday manufactured goods that are deemed to be art merely by virtue of the artist's selection of them as such. They were invented by Marcel Duchamp who wanted to test the limits of what qualifies as a work of art. Although he had collected manufactured objects in his studio in Paris, it was not until he came to New York in 1915 that he identified these objects as a category of art, giving the English name "readymade" to any object purchased "as a sculpture already made." To common household goods, he added signatures and titles, converting them into works of art. When he modified these objects, for example by penning mustache and goatee on the color reproduction of the Mona Lisa, he called them "assisted" or "rectified readymades." Duchamp's most scandalous readymade was the porcelain urinal that he turned on its back, titled Fountain, signed R. Mutt (a pun on the German word Armut, or poverty), and submitted to the supposedly jury-free exhibition at the Society of Independent Artists. When it was rejected, the dadaists launched a publicity campaign and defense of the work.