Readymades of Marcel Duchamp

The readymades of Marcel Duchamp are ordinary manufactured objects that the artist selected and modified, as an antidote to what he called "retinal art".

As an antidote to retinal art he began creating readymades in 1914, when the term was commonly used in the United States to describe manufactured items to distinguish them from handmade goods.

The first definition of "readymade" appeared in André Breton and Paul Éluard's Dictionnaire abrégé du Surréalisme: "an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist".

While published under the name of Marcel Duchamp (or his initials, "MD", to be precise), André Gervais nevertheless asserts that Breton wrote this particular dictionary entry.

[21] As decades passed, however, the Galleria Schwarz replicas "gradually became mainstreamed and eventually became stand-ins for the lost originals, sharing their status and value", according to scholar Adina Kamien-Kazhdan.

[23] By 1974, much of the edition was still unsold, though Schwarz had raised the prices considerably; a complete set was listed for $450,000, and individual works started at $15,000.

[25] Duchamp's proof set was sold by his widow to the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris in 1986.

[30] Her research of items like snow shovels and bottle racks in use at the time failed to turn up any identical matches to photographs of the originals.

However, there are accounts of Walter Arensberg and Joseph Stella being with Duchamp when he purchased the original Fountain at J. L. Mott Iron Works.