Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. 1917

Oak Tree by Michael Craig-Martin. 1973

The term found art—more commonly found object (French: objet trouvé) or readymade—describes art created from the undisguised, but often modified, use of objects that are not normally considered art, often because they already have a mundane, utilitarian function. Marcel Duchamp was the originator of this in the early 20th-century. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a Grammy-award winning American alternative rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1983. ... Readymade is a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, originally released on the bands double album Stadium Arcadium on May 9, 2006. ... Download high resolution version (594x814, 59 KB) The copyright status of this work is difficult or impossible to determine. ... Download high resolution version (594x814, 59 KB) The copyright status of this work is difficult or impossible to determine. ... Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. ... Marcel Duchamp (pronounced ) (July 28, 1887 – October 2, 1968) was a French artist (he became an American citizen in 1955) whose work and ideas had considerable influence on the development of post-World War II Western art, and whose advice to modern art collectors helped shape the tastes of the... 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar (see: 1917 Julian calendar). ... Oak Tree File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Oak Tree File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Picture of Oak Tree hanging in the Tate Modern Michael Craig-Martin (born 28 August 1941, Dublin, Ireland) is a conceptual artist and a painter. ... For the song by James Blunt, see 1973 (song). ... This article is about the philosophical concept of Art. ... Marcel Duchamp (pronounced ) (July 28, 1887 – October 2, 1968) was a French artist (he became an American citizen in 1955) whose work and ideas had considerable influence on the development of post-World War II Western art, and whose advice to modern art collectors helped shape the tastes of the...

Found art derives significance from the designation placed upon it by the artist. The context into which it is placed (e.g. a gallery or museum) is usually also a highly relevant factor. The idea of dignifying commonplace objects in this way was originally a shocking challenge to the accepted distinction between what was considered art as opposed to not art. Although it is now widely accepted in the art world as a viable practice, it continues to arouse media and public hostility, as with the Tate Gallery's Turner Prize exhibition of Tracey Emin's My Bed, which consisted literally of her unmade and dishevelled bed. The Tate Gallery in the United Kingdom is a network of four galleries: Tate Britain (opened 1897), Tate Liverpool (1988), Tate St Ives (1993), Tate Modern (2000), with a complementary website Tate Online (1998). ... Tate Britain: the venue for the Turner Prize. ... Tracey Emin RA (born 3 July 1963) is an English artist of Turkish Cypriot origin, one of the group known as Britartists or YBAs (Young British Artists). ... My Bed is a work by the British artist Tracey Emin. ...

Found art, however, has to have the artist's input, at the very least an idea about it, i.e. the artist's designation of the object as art, which is nearly always reinforced with a title. There is mostly also some degree of modification of the object, although not to the extent that it cannot be recognised. The modification may lead to it being designated a "modified", "interpreted" or "adapted" found object.

Origin: Duchamp

Main article: Readymades of Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp coined the term readymade in 1915 to describe his found art. Duchamp assembled the first readymade, entitled Bicycle Wheel in 1913, the same time as his Nude Descending a Staircase was attracting the attention of critics at the International Exhibition of Modern Art. His Fountain, a urinal which he signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt", shocked the art world in 1917. Bottle Rack is a bottle drying rack signed by Duchamp, and is considered to be the first "pure" readymade.^[1] Fountain 1917; 1964 artist-authorized replica made by the artists dealer, Arturo Schwartz, based on a photograph by Alfred Stieglitz. ... Marcel Duchamp (pronounced ) (July 28, 1887 – October 2, 1968) was a French artist (he became an American citizen in 1955) whose work and ideas had considerable influence on the development of post-World War II Western art, and whose advice to modern art collectors helped shape the tastes of the... Wheelset redirects here. ... Marcel Duchamp. ... Armory Show poster. ... Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. ... Composite body, painted, and glazed bottle. ... Look up rack in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Research by Rhonda Roland Shearer indicates that Duchamp may have fabricated his found objects. Exhaustive research of mundane items like snow shovels and bottle racks in use at the time failed to reveal identical matches. The urinal, upon close inspection, is non-functional. 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.^[2] Walter Arensberg was a poet, who with his wife Louise, collected art and supported artistic endeavors. ... Brooklyn Bridge by Joseph Stella. ...

Development

The use of found objects was quickly taken up by the Dada movement, being used by Man Ray and Francis Picabia who combined it with traditional art by sticking combs onto a painting to represent hair. [1] A well-known work by Man Ray is Gift (1921), [2] which is an iron with nails sticking out from its flat underside, thus rendering it useless. DaDa is a concept album by Alice Cooper, released in 1983. ... For other uses, see Man Ray (disambiguation). ... Francis Picabia in his studio. ...

The combination of several found objects is a type of readymade sometimes known as an assemblage. Another such example is Marcel Duchamp's Why Not Sneeze Rrose Sélavy?, consisting of a small birdcage containing a thermometer, cuttlebone, and 151 marble cubes resembling sugar cubes. An assemblage is an archaeological term meaning a group of different artefacts found in association with one another, that is, in the same context. ... Marcel Duchamp. ...

By the time of the Surrealist Exhibition of Objects in 1936 a whole range of sub-classifications had been devised—most of which are now only of historical interest—including found objects, readymade objects, perturbed objects, mathematical objects, natural objects, interpreted natural objects, incorporated natural objects, Oceanic objects, American objects and Surrealist objects. At this time Surrealist leader, André Breton, defined readymades as "manufactured objects raised to the dignity of works of art through the choice of the artist." Max Ernst. ... André Breton André Breton (French IPA: ) (February 19, 1896 – September 28, 1966) was a French writer, poet, and surrealist theorist, and is best known as the main founder of surrealism. ...

Pablo Picasso used found objects as the basis for Baboon and Young, and joined a bicycle saddle with handle bars to make a bull's head. Picasso redirects here. ...

In the 1960s found objects were present in both the Fluxus movement and in Pop art. Joseph Beuys exhibited modified found objects, such as rocks with a hole in them stuffed with fur and fat, a van with sledges trailing behind it, and a rusty girder. Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning to flow—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. ... Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? (1956) is one of the earliest works to be considered pop art. ... Joseph Beuys (IPA: ; May 12, 1921 – January 23, 1986) was an influential German artist who came to prominence in the 1960s. ...

Commodity sculpture

In the 1980s, a variation of found art emerged called commodity sculpture where commercially mass-produced items would be arranged in the art gallery as sculpture. The focus of this variety of sculpture was on the marketing, display of products. These artists included Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, and Ashley Bickerton (who later moved on to do other kinds of work). Jeff Koons (born January 21, 1955), is an American artist. ... Ashley Bickerton was born in the West Indies in 1959. ...

One of Jeff Koons' early signature works was Two Ball 50/50 Tank, 1985, which consisted of two basketballs floating in water, which half-fills a glass tank (an influence on Damien Hirst). Jeff Koons (born January 21, 1955), is an American artist. ... Damien Hirst (born June 7, 1965) is an English artist and the most prominent of the group that has been dubbed Young British Artists (or YBAs). ...

Trash art

Junk art at Oak Street Beach

A specific sub-genre of found art is known as trash art or junk art. These works are primarily comprised from components that have been discarded. Often they come quite literally from the trash. Many organizations sponsor junk art competitions. Oak Street beach, 1925 Oak Street Beach is located on North Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, Illinois, on the shore of Lake Michigan. ...

Contemporary

Throughout the 1990s, the Young British Artists (YBAs) made extensive use of found "objects", often with very strong press reaction. Damien Hirst exhibited a shark preserved in formaldehyde in a glass tank and called it The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. He has taken this to extremes by presenting in the same way a cow and calf cut into sections, and, in A Thousand Years, a rotting cow's head, maggots and flies. Tracey Emin exhibited a tent covered with appliquéd names, and then her own unmade bed with sweat-stained sheets, surrounded by items such as her slippers, period-stained underwear and drink bottles. Sarah Lucas enlarged to a giant size a lurid tabloid press cutting; she also exhibited a mattress with two melons, a bucket and a cucumber, representing female and male genitalia. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living by Damien Hirst (1991). ... Tracey Emin RA (born 3 July 1963) is an English artist of Turkish Cypriot origin, one of the group known as Britartists or YBAs (Young British Artists). ... Sarah Lucas (born Holloway, London, 1962) is a contemporary British artist. ...

Found art can also occur on the internet, where an image found on the internet can become the core component of a larger artwork made by modifying the image through basic computer graphic tools.

Historical precedents

Gold, when used in art, as in Medieval altar pieces, is present for its own innate quality, and is therefore a found object, as are precious jewels used in artworks. The essential difference is that these materials were already considered precious, whereas modern art's use of found objects has mostly been of mundane items, which are then deemed to be elevated into a special status.

An exception in 2003 was the Chapman Brothers use of a set of Francisco Goya prints, The Disasters of War, which they "adapted" by collaging clown and puppy faces onto the figures. The prints were valuable already in their own right as art.[3] Jake Chapman (born 1966) and Dinos Chapman (born 1962) are brothers and British artists who work almost exclusively in collaboration with each other. ... Goya redirects here. ...

Damien Hirst has suggested that a painting can be considered an adapted found object (the object being paint), i.e. the whole history of art is based on the found objects.

In the 19th century, the French writer Comte de Lautréamont had drawn attention to the possibilities of transforming the otherwise mundane object the now famous phrase, "Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table." Lautréamont Comte de Lautréamont was the pen name of Isidore Lucien Ducasse (April 4, 1846 – November 24, 1870), a French poet whose only work, Les Chants de Maldoror, had a major influence on modern literature, and in particular on the Surrealist movement. ...

Criticism

The modern use of found objects aroused hostility from the start, when Duchamp's urinal, titled Fountain, was rejected by the "unjuried" 1917 Society of Independent Artists on the basis that it was not art. Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. ... Society of Independent Artists was an association of American artists founded in 1916 and based in New York. ...

The found object in art has been a subject of polarised debate in Britain throughout the 1990s due to the use of it by the YBAs. It has been rejected by the general public and journalists, and supported by public museums and art critics. In his 2000 Dimbleby lecture, Who's afraid of modern art, Sir Nicholas Serota advocated such kinds of "difficult" art, while quoting opposition such as the Daily Mail headline "For 1,000 years art has been one of our great civilising forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled beds threaten to make barbarians of us all". A more unexpected rejection in 1999 came from artists—some of whom had previously worked with found objects—who founded the Stuckists group and issued a manifesto denouncing such work in favour of a return to painting with the statement "Ready-made art is a polemic of materialism". [4] Nicholas Serota Sir Nicholas Serota (born 1946) is a curator, and is currently Director of the Tate Gallery, the United Kingdoms national gallery of modern and British art. ... The Daily Mail is a British newspaper, currently published in a tabloid format. ... The logo on the Stuckism International web site Stuckism is an art movement that was founded in 1999 in Britain by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art. ...

Other art forms

Found Magazine, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, collects and catalogs found notes, photos, and other interesting items. Music composers use found sound in their compositions. Examples include John Cage, Nicolas Collins, Art of Noise and The Books. Writers Brion Gysin and William Burroughs pioneered "cut ups", which was the random assembling of cut-up pre-existing text. This has also been employed by David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, Ted Milton and Thom Yorke for lyric writing. Poets, too, create art out of non-literary writing, such as vocabulary books, adverts or newspaper articles. Adrian Henri made the poem On the Late Late Massachers Stillbirths and Deformed Children a Smoother Lovelier Skin Job (and the title) by combining found text from John Milton's "Sonnet XVIII", the TV Times and a CND leaflet. Cordelia McGuire turned a funeral home classified advertisement into a poem entitled Embalmer by adding line breaks. Found art features in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film Amélie and the 2001 independent comedy, Ghost World. Issue #4 of Found Magazine, published in 2005. ... Ann Arbor redirects here. ... For the Mortal Kombat character, see Johnny Cage. ... Nicolas Collins (born March 26, 1954 in New York City) is an composer of mostly electronic music and former student of Alvin Lucier. ... Art of Noise Edited twelve inch single featured the iconic Art of Noise mask Art of Noise was an avant-garde synthpop group formed in 1983 by producer Trevor Horn, music journalist Paul Morley, and session musicians/studio hands Anne Dudley, J.J. Jeczalik, and Gary Langan. ... The Books are a band founded by and consisting of American Nick Zammuto and Dutchman Paul de Jong in New York City in 2000. ... Brion Gysin (January 19, 1916 - July 13, 1986) was a painter, writer, sound poet, and performance artist born outside of London, Taplow, Buckinghamshire. ... William S. Burroughs. ... David Bowie (pronounced ) (born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947) is an English musician, actor, producer, arranger, and audio engineer. ... Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 – c. ... {Infobox musical artist | | Name = Ted Milton | Background = Poet, Musician, Puppeteer | Origin = London, England | Years_active = 1962—present | Instrument = saxophones, | Genre = Art rock} Ted Milton born 1943. ... Thomas Edward Yorke (born 7 October 1968 in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England) is a Grammy-nominated English musician, best known as the lead singer of the band Radiohead. ... Adrian Henri (April 10, 1932 – December 21, 2000) was a British poet and painter. ... The TV Times is a television listings magazine published in the United Kingdom. ... CND logo In British politics, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has been at the forefront of the peace movement in the United Kingdom and claims to be Europes largest single-issue peace campaign. ... Jean-Pierre Jeunet (born 3 September 1953) is a French film director. ... For other uses, see Amélie (disambiguation). ... Ghost World is a 2001 film by Terry Zwigoff, based on a graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, also titled Ghost World. ...

Artists

Many modern artists have used found objects in their art. These include:

• Gustavo Aguerre
• Arman
• Joseph Beuys
• Guillaume Bijl
• Jake and Dinos Chapman
• Joseph Cornell
• Tony Cragg
• Salvador Dalí
• Mark Divo
• Marcel Duchamp
• Tracey Emin
• Tom Friedman
• Damien Hirst
• Matthieu Laurette
• Sarah Lucas
• David Mach
• Rodney McMillian
• Giuseppe Penone
• Francis Picabia
• Pablo Picasso
• Robert Rauschenberg
• Man Ray
• Leo Sewell
• Daniel Spoerri
• Kurt Schwitters
• Tolleck Winner
• Isaiah Zagar

Gustavo Aguerre, born 1953 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, artist, curator, writer, theatre designer. ... Arman (November 17, 1928 - October 22, 2005), was a French-born American artist and a prolific and experimental creator. ... Joseph Beuys (IPA: ; May 12, 1921 – January 23, 1986) was an influential German artist who came to prominence in the 1960s. ... °Antwerp 1946 Belgian installation-artist The Antwerp artist Guillaume Bijl has been especially known for his Installation art. ... Jake Chapman (born 1966) and Dinos Chapman (born 1962) are brothers and British artists who work almost exclusively in collaboration with each other. ... A photograph of Joseph Cornell Joseph Cornell Untitled (Dieppe) c. ... Ferryman. ... Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquis of Púbol (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989), was a Spanish surrealist painter of Catalan descent born in Figueres, Catalonia (Spain). ... Mark Divo born 1966 in Luxemburg. ... Marcel Duchamp (pronounced ) (July 28, 1887 – October 2, 1968) was a French artist (he became an American citizen in 1955) whose work and ideas had considerable influence on the development of post-World War II Western art, and whose advice to modern art collectors helped shape the tastes of the... Tracey Emin RA (born 3 July 1963) is an English artist of Turkish Cypriot origin, one of the group known as Britartists or YBAs (Young British Artists). ... There have been two notable people named Tom Friedman: Tom Friedman is an American sculptor. ... Damien Hirst (born June 7, 1965) is an English artist and the most prominent of the group that has been dubbed Young British Artists (or YBAs). ... Matthieu Laurette (born 1970 in Villeneuve Saint Georges, France) is a media and conceptual contemporary French artist who works in a variety of media, from TV and video to installation and public interventions. ... Sarah Lucas (born Holloway, London, 1962) is a contemporary British artist. ... David Mach (born 18 March 1956) is a Scottish sculptor and installation artist. ... Rodney McMillian (born 1969, Columbia, South Carolina) is an artist based in Los Angeles. ... Giuseppe Penone is an Italian artist, concerned with establishing a contact between man and nature. ... Francis Picabia in his studio. ... Picasso redirects here. ... Rauschenberg redirects here. ... For other uses, see Man Ray (disambiguation). ... Daniel Spoerri (born Daniel Isaac Feinstein 27 March 1930) is a Romanian-born French dancer and performance artist. ... Kurt Schwitters (June 20, 1887 - January 8, 1948) was a German painter who was born in Hannover, Germany. ... Tolleck Winner born July 30, 1959 in the former USSR. London-based sculptor working in all media. ...

See also

• List of found art
• Assemblage
• Appropriation (art)
• Art intervention
• Classificatory disputes about art
• Collage
• Cut-up technique
• Found object
• Found poetry
• Found footage
• Found Footage Festival
• Art car
• Plunderphonics
• Pop art
• Punk fashion and punk ideology
• Modernism

Below is a list of pieces, by artist, which are or include found objects, followed by the objects. ... Assemblage is an art term used to describe many different art forms, and movements. ... Composition with Fruit, Guitar and Glass. ... Art intervention as a performance artist, with eyes closed, sits motionless for long periods balanced on an uncomfortable railing in Montmartre, Paris, France An art intervention is an interaction with a previously existing artwork, audience or venue/space. ... Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. ... For other uses, see Collage (disambiguation). ... The cut-up technique, also known as fishbowling, is an aleatory literary technique or genre in which a text is cut up at random and rearranged to create a new text. ... A found object, in an artistic sense, indicates the use of an object which has not been designed for an artistic purpose, but which exists for another purpose already. ... Found poetry is the rearrangement of words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages that are taken from other sources and reframed as poetry by changes in spacing and/or lines (and consequently meaning), or by altering the text by additions and/or deletions. ... Found footage is a filmmaking term which describes a method of compiling films partly or entirely of footage which has not been created by the filmmaker, and changing its meaning by putting it into a new context. ... It is proposed that this article be deleted, because of the following concern: This article is about a subject which may not be notable enough to be included on Wikipedia. ... An art car is a vehicle that has its appearance modified as an act of personal artistic expression. ... Plunderphonics is a term coined by John Oswald in 1985 in an essay entitled Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative. ... Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? (1956) is one of the earliest works to be considered pop art. ... Punk fashion is the styles of clothing, hairstyles, cosmetics, jewelry, and body modifications of the punk subculture. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... For Christian theological modernism, see Liberal Christianity and Modernism (Roman Catholicism). ...

References

1. ^ Tomkins, Calvin: Duchamp: A Biography, pages 181-186. Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1996. ISBN 0-8050-5789-7
2. ^ Shearer, Rhonda Roland: "Marcel Duchamp's Impossible Bed and Other 'Not' Readymade Objects: A Possible Route of Influence From Art To Science", 1997.

External links

• Betacourt, Michael: "The Richard Mutt Case: Looking for Marcel Duchamp's Fountain"
• Thompson, Charles: "A Stuckist on Stuckism" (See section "The medium modifies the message")
• Iverson, Margaret: "Readymade, found object, photograph" - An extended examination of the subject

[5] Cultural ReUse Research Collaborative, Found Object Project