[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/duchamp_wings_720_107830.jpg?w=720″]<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen does something become a work of art? A canvas once it\u2019s been painted? A block of marble once it\u2019s been carved? For Marcel Duchamp (1887\u20131968), the answer was much more direct and far more radical: Anything\u2014indeed, everything\u2014could be art if an artist deemed it so. \u201cAn ordinary object,\u201d he said, can be \u201celevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.\u201d This notion, which found expression in his iconic Readymades, would prove to be the most revolutionary innovation of 20th-century art.<\/p>\n
\n\tDuchamp\u2019s Readymades\u2014realized between 1913 and 1923, the year he claimed to have quit making art\u2014were mass-produced goods plucked from the everyday, either alone or in combination. Duchamp\u2019s very first Readymade was an example of the latter: the front fork of a bicycle bolted upright onto a four-legged stool, allowing the attached wheel to spin freely. That object was joined in 1914 by another when Duchamp went to the Bazar de l\u2019H\u00f4tel de Ville, the legendary Parisian department store, and brought home a towerlike metal bottle-drying rack festooned with prongs, known as a h\u00e9risson<\/em> (\u201chedgehog\u201d) due to its spiky appearance.<\/p>\n \n\tStill, Duchamp didn\u2019t treat either as art. Initially he viewed the bicycle wheel as an amusing diversion; he \u201cenjoyed looking at it, just as I enjoy looking at the flames dancing in the fireplace.\u201d By the same token, he left the bottle rack alone. In fact, Duchamp didn\u2019t coin the moniker Readymade until a 1915 sojourn to New York City.<\/p>\n \n\tDuchamp\u2019s journey to New York was necessitated by the outbreak of World War I. While deemed unfit for military service due to a rheumatic heart condition, Duchamp was an otherwise healthy-looking young man out of uniform, attracting the ire of fellow citoyens<\/em> who considered him an unpatriotic shirker. Duchamp was insulted, threatened, and even spat upon, leading him to leave Paris.<\/p>\n \n\tUpon arriving in New York, Duchamp was immediately struck by its modernity and absence of class consciousness. Maybe the resultant sense of freedom led Duchamp to believe that there were no boundaries in art, or perhaps it was the cornucopia of stuff spilling out from shops on every block, but for whatever reason, the Readymade notion became crystalized in a letter Duchamp wrote to his sister, Suzanne, back in Paris. <\/p>\n \n\tMentioning the bicycle wheel and the bottle rack, he added that he\u2019d \u201cbought some objects of similar taste\u201d while in New York. \u201cI will treat them as \u2018readymade,\u2019\u201d he noted. \u201cI sign them and .\u00a0.\u00a0. then apply an .\u00a0.\u00a0. inscription.\u201d He asked Suzanne to go to his studio and sign the bottle rack \u201cApr\u00e9s<\/em> Marcel Duchamp,\u201d to create a \u201cdistant \u2018Readymade.\u2019\u201d Unfortunately, by then she\u2019d pitched it into the garbage along with the bicycle wheel while cleaning out her brother\u2019s space.<\/p>\n \n\tDuchamp\u2019s missive also referenced a Readymade conceived as such: A snow shovel with \u201cIn Advance of the Broken Arm\u201d and \u201cApr\u00e9s<\/em> Marcel Duchamp\u201c written on the handle. While many consider the words an ironic warning about the dangers of leaving a sidewalk uncleared during winter, Duchamp meant it to be nonsensical, telling Suzanne, \u201cDon\u2019t try too hard to understand it in the Romantic or Impressionist or Cubist sense\u2014that does not have any connection with it.\u201c<\/p>\n \n\tThe piece originated in an encounter with a hardware store in November 1915, as Duchamp walked along Columbus Avenue with Suzanne\u2019s husband, the artist Jean Crotti (1878\u20131958). Both men marveled at the surfeit of shovels stacked by the door. Impressed by this demonstration of America\u2019s manufacturing might, Duchamp took one back to his studio, inscribed it, and hung from the ceiling.<\/p>\n \n\tReadymades didn\u2019t emerge in a vacuum, however. In 1912, Georges Braque (1882\u20131963) had glued strips of fake-wood wallpaper onto a pencil-and-gouache still life titled Fruit Dish and Glass<\/em>, done in the Analytic Cubist style he\u2019d developed with his colleague\/competitor\/collaborator Pablo Picasso (1881\u20131973). By inserting this common, mass-produced material into his composition, Braque blurred the line between ordinary things and works of art. Picasso went even further with Glass of Absinthe<\/em> (1914), a small sculpture topped with an actual absinthe spoon\u2014the perforated utensil made to hold a sugar cube while the liquor is poured over it. Between them, Braque and Picasso had formulated appropriative strategies that would be used over the ensuing decades.<\/p>\n \n\tDuchamp\u2019s bicycle wheel, however, differed significantly from Picasso\u2019s spoon, as the latter served a representational role. Readymades, by contrast, were chosen with studied neutrality, \u201cbased on a reaction of visual indifference,\u201d as Duchamp put it. This attitude also distinguished Readymades from Surrealist objets trouv\u00e9s inspired by Freud\u2019s theory of fetishism (the sexual fixation on shoes and other clothing), the most famous of which was Salvador Dal\u00ed\u2019s Lobster Telephone<\/em> (1938).<\/p>\n \n\tDuchamp soon introduced a flood of Readymades, and while their selection was random, they shared one key distinction: All had been useful items rendered useless by Duchamp to question art\u2019s efficacy. Articles divorced from functionality in this fashion included Traveler\u2019s Folding Item<\/em> (1916), a cover for an Underwood typewriter, which Duchamp chose because he \u201cthought it would be a good idea to introduce softness in the Readymade.\u201d <\/p>\n Trap<\/em> (1917), a coat hanger with four hooks screwed into a board, started out destined for a wall but was left unattended on the floor instead. After regularly tripping over it, Duchamp decided, \u201cThe hell with it, if it wants to stay there and bore me, I\u2019ll nail it down,\u201d making it a Readymade. Similarly, Duchamp suspended the eponymously titled Hat Rack<\/em> (also 1917) well out of reach of anyone\u2019s chapeau.<\/p>\n Hat Rack<\/em> resembled a spider, or at least Duchamp suggested as much in a 1918 photograph of Readymades casting shadows on his studio wall. In the photo, Hat Rack<\/em> is seen nestled within the weblike Sculpture for Traveling<\/em> (1918), a net of rubber shower caps cut up and glued together that Duchamp took on a trip to Buenos Aires.<\/p>\n \n\tSeveral Readymades were unrealized. One, Emergency in favor of twice<\/em>, existed solely as an unfathomable phrase mentioned in a letter from Duchamp to his sister. Another involved lower Manhattan\u2019s Woolworth Building. In a note to himself from 1916, Duchamp wrote, \u201cFind inscription for Woolworth Bldg as readymade,\u201d though he never settled on one. The structure was the tallest in the world at the time, making Duchamp\u2019s plan all the more audacious.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Readymades have usually been divided into \u201cassisted,\u201d or altered in some fashion, and \u201cunassisted.\u201d Technically, all inscribed or mixed Readymades were assisted, though the term was more easily understood in those works evincing Duchamp\u2019s facture. An early example is Pharmacy<\/em> (1914), in which he added two spots of color and his signature to a cheap, kitschy print of a winter landscape. (The splotches reminded Duchamp of apothecary bottles, hence the name.)<\/p>\n \n\tTwo other Readymades, Apolin\u00e8re Enameled<\/em> (1916\u201317) and L.H.O.O.Q<\/em> (1919), likewise displayed Duchamp\u2019s hand. The first, a lithograph-on-tin advertisement for Sapolin Enamel, pictured its label above a scene of a young girl painting a bedstead. By subtracting and adding letters from the brand, Duchamp created an homage to the French poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire (1880\u20131918), though he spelled the name wrong (he later said he hadn\u2019t known Apollinaire all that well). Duchamp also penciled in the back of the young girl\u2019s hair in a mirror depicted in the ad.<\/p>\n \n\tFor L.H.O.O.Q<\/em>, Duchamp scribbled a Vandyke beard on a postcard of the Mona Lisa before adding the title\u2014which, when the letters are sounded out in French, mean \u201cShe\u2019s got a hot ass\u201d\u2014underneath. Although Apolinere Enameled<\/em> possessed unsavory erotic undertones with its image of a child caressing a phallic bedpost with a brush, L.H.O.O.Q.<\/em> made the subtext text in its gender-bending send-up of the Old Masters.<\/p>\n \n\tSome of Duchamp\u2019s Readymades were produced as gifts for, or with input from, his chief benefactor, Walter Arensberg, a steel-fortune heir. Paris Air<\/em> (1919), 50 cc of the titular substance sealed in a pharmaceutical ampule, was one such present for Arensberg, while a steel comb cryptically inscribed with \u201c3 or 4 drops from [of] height have nothing to do with savagery\u201d in French was a collaboration with him. So, too, was With Hidden Noise <\/em>(1919), a ball of twine sandwiched between two brass plates. It was sent to Arensberg with instructions to unscrew the top, secrete an object known only to him in the center of the twine, and then close it back up. The title was a nod to the rattling sound produced by the mystery artifact.<\/p>\n \n\tArensberg was also involved in the creation of Duchamp\u2019s most infamous Readymade: Fountain<\/em> (1917), a urinal turned upside-down that was entered into the inaugural exhibit of the Society of Independent Artists under the boldly emblazoned signature R. Mutt. Fountain<\/em> was installed out of sight from the rest of the show, prompting Duchamp to remove it. It soon graced the cover of the Dada journal The Blind Man<\/em>, in a photo taken by Alfred Stieglitz to accompany an essay by Duchamp defending Mutt.<\/p>\n \n\tEssentially a test of artistic freedom, Fountain<\/em> was conceived by Duchamp along with Arensberg and the painter Joseph Stella, who together went to the J. L. Mott Iron Works at 118 Fifth Avenue to purchase the urinal. Arensberg was also a board member of the Society of Independent Artists (as was Duchamp) and thus obliged to answer for Fountain<\/em>. In one instance, the painter George Bellows angrily confronted Arensberg, demanding to know whether \u201chorse manure on a canvas\u201d would be acceptable for the show, to which Arensberg replied that it would.<\/p>\n \n\tJust about every aspect of Fountain<\/em> has been debated, from the origin of Duchamp\u2019s pseudonym (which he said came from the popular comic Mutt and Jeff<\/em>) to the place of its procurement to whether it was really Duchamp who had submitted it. Some have argued that it was actually the wildly bohemian Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, a notion based on another letter to Suzanne in which Duchamp said a female friend had brought in Fountain<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tWhether the baroness was involved or not, it\u2019s true that other Readymades were produced by a woman\u2014or at least a fictional one in the form of Duchamp\u2019s drag alter ego, Rrose S\u00e9lavy. In terms of code-switching, Rrose S\u00e9lavy was the counterpart to thebearded Mona Lisa in L.H.O.O.Q<\/em>. Her name\u2014a pun on Eros, c\u2019est la vie<\/em> (\u201cEros, that\u2019s life\u201d)\u2014was originally spelled without the extra R<\/em> but was changed in 1921 when Duchamp wrote it on L\u2019Oeil Cacodylate<\/em>, a collage by Francis Picabia (1879\u20131953). Picabia had created it while laid up with an eye infection and had asked friends visiting him to add their names to it, much as they would to a cast.<\/p>\n \n\tDuchamp, elegantly coiffed and dressed in the latest fashions, appeared as Rrose in photos taken by the American photographer and artist Man Ray (1890\u20131976). Rrose was soon connected to several Readymades, most famously Why Not Sneeze Rose S\u00e9lavy?<\/em> (1921), a birdcage containing a thermometer and cuttlefish bone stuck into a jumble of marble cubes. The last, ordinarily used to remove built-up lime scale inside teakettles, was purchased from a hardware store, and their cool-to-the-touch temperature, along with the thermometer, were meant to evoke catching a cold. The cuttlefish bone, meanwhile, symbolized the bird that had literally flown the coop. Duchamp\u2019s title also alluded to the physiological similarity between a sneeze and an orgasm.<\/p>\n \n\tAnother Readymade ascribed to Rrose, Fresh Widow<\/em> (1920), features a scale model of a French window with panels of black leather covering the glass. Beside its evident wordplay between widow<\/em> and window<\/em>, Fresh Widow<\/em> is notable because it is one of the few Readymades to survive intact, as almost all of the rest were lost or destroyed over time (though editioned replicas were made in the 1960s).<\/p>\n \n\tThe Readymades, then, were as perishable as the objects used to make them, which was always part of Duchamp\u2019s intent. More than most artists, he understood how the Industrial Revolution had transformed society, not only in the way it replaced the handcrafted with the machine-built, but also in the way it challenged assumptions about cultural permanence. Since the definition of a work of art depended on its unique character, Duchamp wondered how it could survive against an avalanche of snow shovels. In the age of AI, that question seems as relevant as ever.<\/p>\n \n\tRead more of our Marcel Duchamp coverage\u00a0here, here, here, and here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/artists\/marcel-duchamp-readymades-why-so-important-1234780808\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/duchamp_wings_720_107830.jpg?w=720″] When does something become a work of art? A canvas once it\u2019s been painted? A block of marble once it\u2019s been carved? For Marcel Duchamp (1887\u20131968), the answer was much more direct and far more radical: Anything\u2014indeed, everything\u2014could be art if an artist deemed it so. \u201cAn ordinary object,\u201d he said, can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1877816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1877816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1877816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1877816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1877816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}