Readymade
Students of Modern & Contemporary Art Practices (Art 179E HM, Spring 2019)
February 12, 2019, 4:15-5:30 p.m.
Sprague Gallery
“Readymade,” a pop-up exhibition
Ninety-nine students of Modern & Contemporary Art Practices (Art 179E HM, Spring 2019) make a temporary display of their readymades in the courtyard.
By the end of the nineteenth century the term ‘ready-made’ was being used to describe objects that were manufactured as opposed to being handmade. Marcel Duchamp used this term to describe his process of selecting things as art “based on a reaction of visual indifference, with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste.”1 Thought of as originating with Pablo Picasso’s use of things like newspapers and matchboxes in his collages, the technique is common in 20th and 21st Century art. Integral to it is the idea of the found object. A found object is a natural or man-made object, or fragment of an object, that is found (or sometimes bought) by an artist and kept because of some intrinsic interest the artist sees in it.2 Artists use found objects on their own or they combine them into assemblages or assisted readymades.
Modern & Contemporary Art Practices is taught by Professor Ken Fandell.
1. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/r/readymade
2. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/f/found-object