Editing Marcel Duchamp (section)

==Readymades==
{{main|Readymades of Marcel Duchamp}}
"Readymades" were [[found objects]] which Duchamp chose and presented as art. In 1913, Duchamp installed a ''[[Bicycle Wheel]]'' in his studio. The Bicycle Wheel was an idea of  Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. However, the idea of ''Readymades'' did not fully develop until 1915. The idea was to question the very notion of Art, and the adoration of art, which Duchamp found "unnecessary".<ref name="bbc">Interview, BBC TV, Joan Bakewell, 1966</ref>

{{blockquote| My idea was to choose an object that wouldn't attract me, either by its beauty or by its ugliness. To find a point of indifference in my looking at it, you see.<ref name="bbc" />}}

''[[Bottle Rack]]'' (1914), a bottle-drying rack signed by Duchamp, is considered to be the first "pure" readymade. ''[[In Advance of the Broken Arm]]'' (1915), a snow shovel, also called ''Prelude to a Broken Arm'', followed soon after. His ''[[Fountain (Duchamp)|Fountain]]'', a urinal signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt", shocked the art world in 1917.<ref name="Cabanne, P"/> ''Fountain'' was selected in 2004 as "the most influential artwork of the 20th century" by 500 renowned artists and historians.<ref name="BBC 2010" />

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[[File:Marcel Duchamp, 1919, L.H.O.O.Q.jpg|thumb|Marcel Duchamp, 1919, ''[[L.H.O.O.Q.]]''<ref name="dadart">[http://www.dadart.com/dadaism/dada/035a-duchamp-cage.html Marcel Duchamp 1887–1968, dadart.com]</ref>]]
In 1919, Duchamp made a parody of the ''[[Mona Lisa]]'' by adorning a cheap reproduction of the painting with a mustache and goatee. To this he added the inscription ''[[L.H.O.O.Q.]]'', a phonetic game which, when read out loud in French quickly sounds like ''"Elle a chaud au cul"''. This can be translated as "She has a hot ass", implying that the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability. It may also have been intended as a Freudian joke, referring to [[Leonardo da Vinci]]'s alleged homosexuality. Duchamp gave a "loose" translation of L.H.O.O.Q. as "there is fire down below" in a late interview with [[Arturo Schwarz]]. According to [[Rhonda Roland Shearer]], the apparent ''Mona Lisa'' reproduction is in fact a copy modeled partly on Duchamp's own face.<ref name="asrl">{{cite web |url=http://www.artscienceresearchlab.org/articles/panorama.htm |title=Mona Lisa: Who is Hidden Behind the Woman with the Mustache? |access-date=27 April 2008 |publisher=Art Science Research Laboratory |year=2003 |author=Marting, Marco De |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080320203734/http://www.artscienceresearchlab.org/articles/panorama.htm |archive-date=20 March 2008}}</ref> Research published by Shearer also speculates that Duchamp himself may have created some of the objects which he claimed to be "found objects".