Editing Found object (section)

=== Duchamp's "readymades" ===
{{main|Readymades of Marcel Duchamp}}

[[Marcel Duchamp]] coined the term ''readymade'' in 1915 to describe a common object that had been selected and not materially altered in any way. Duchamp assembled ''[[Bicycle Wheel]]'' in 1913 by attaching a common front wheel and fork to the seat of a common stool. This was not long after his ''[[Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2|Nude Descending a Staircase]]'' was attracting the attention of critics at the [[Armory Show|International Exhibition of Modern Art]]. In 1917, ''[[Fountain (Duchamp)|Fountain]]'', a urinal signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt", and generally attributed to Duchamp, confounded the art world. In the same year, Duchamp indicated in a letter to his sister, Suzanne Duchamp, that a female friend was centrally involved in the conception of this work. As he writes: "One of my female friends who had adopted the pseudonym Richard Mutt sent me a porcelain urinal as a sculpture."<ref>Duchamp, Marcel trans. and qtd. in [[Irene Gammel|Gammel, Irene]]. ''Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002, 224.</ref> [[Irene Gammel]] argues that the piece is more in line with the scatological aesthetics of Duchamp's friend, the [[Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven|Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven]], than Duchamp's.<ref>Gammel, ''Baroness Elsa'', 224–225.</ref> The other possible, and more probable, "female friend" is  [[Louise Varèse|Louise Norton]] (later Varèse), who contributed an essay to ''[[The Blind Man]]'' discussing ''Fountain''.<ref>[http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/blindman/2/05.htm "Buddha of the Bathroom"], ''[[The Blind Man]]'', no. 2, May 1917, pp. 5-6.</ref>  Norton, who recently had separated from her husband, was living at the time in an apartment owned by her parents at 110 West 88th Street in [[New York City]], and this address is partially discernible (along with "Richard Mutt") on the paper entry ticket attached to the object, as seen in Stieglitz's photograph.<ref>Francis M. Naumann, ''New York Dada, 1915-23'' (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), p. 239, note 17.</ref>

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.<ref>Shearer, Rhonda Roland: [http://www.duchamp.org/ImpossibleBed/PartI/ "Marcel Duchamp's Impossible Bed and Other 'Not' Readymade Objects: A Possible Route of Influence From Art To Science"], 1997.</ref>