The Readymade

The Readymade in Sculpture

            The readymade or  found object as used in sculpture is a vital, if debatable, part of sculpture. We usually think of art as something that has had tremendous effort put into making it by an individual artist. Artistic creation surely must necessitate that the artist carefully controls the form of their work, and surely commonplace objects are in no way art. The world at large has, and most likely will continue, to hold the opinion that art is something separate from everyday life. This makes the idea that mass produced goods as the parts or whole of an artistic piece is difficult for observers to fully understand, despite over one hundred years of the readymade appearing in art.

            One of the most recognized readymade sculptures is Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, in which he famously signed and dated a urinal that otherwise was unchanged from its mass-produced qualities. This would spark debates about what art could be and at what point objects ceased to be art, and solidifies the readymade as a permanent feature of the art world. However, titling a manufactured product is not the only approach to using found objects as pieces of art.

            A tremendous amount of artwork combines and rearranges found objects into original compositions. This use of the everyday in the creation of original imagery and form can best be seen in Dada sculpture. Raoul Hausman’s Mechanical Head can easily be picked apart into its individual objects: a mannequin head, a pocket watch, a ruler, a purse, etc. However, to say the whole is just these objects and not an entirely unencountered object is an egregious evaluation. While we may be familiar with such objects in the context of desks, stores, and our homes, once they come together in such a way they hold new relationships and value.

            This exemplifies one very important aspect of the readymade: its power to estrange. Everyday things fly by us in our routines, a veritable deluge of objects that we must use or hold important in certain circumstances throughout the day. To suddenly see things we think we know so well suddenly arranged or contorted in unexpected ways creates a valuable point of divergence from the banal. It affords us the opportunity to feel unease and as a result question what we perceive as normal. Not many people would intently study a cup and spoon sitting on a saucer, but wrap fur around those objects as Meret Oppenheim did, and it opens a world of questioning and dialogue.