Antecedents One curator considers East Asian
scholar's rocks to be early examples of found objects. Found and collected in natural settings, the rocks are changed only minimally for display, seldom beyond the addition of a display stand, and are meant to be contemplated as idealized representations of nature. Geological processes, chief among them
erosion, give the rocks their distinctive qualities, rather than any modification by an artist or artisan. In 2017–2018, the French expert found and identified seventeen unpublished works in a private collection, classified as a national treasure on May 7, 2021, by the French Ministry of Culture, including ''Des souteneurs encore dans la force de l'âge et le ventre dans l'herbe
by Alphonse Allais,'' consisting of a green carriage curtain suspended from a wooden cylinder. This work was certainly exhibited at the
Incoherents exhibitions in Paris between 1883 and 1893. According to Johann Naldi, this work is the oldest known readymade and was a source of inspiration for Marcel Duchamp.
Duchamp's "readymades" 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 was attracting the attention of critics at the
International Exhibition of Modern Art. In 1917,
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."
Irene Gammel argues that the piece is more in line with the scatological aesthetics of Duchamp's friend, the
Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, than Duchamp's. The other possible, and more probable, "female friend" is
Louise Norton (later Varèse), who contributed an essay to
The Blind Man discussing
Fountain. 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. 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.
Later development '' by
Michael Craig-Martin; 1973 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. A well-known work by Man Ray is
Gift (1921), which is an iron with nails sticking out from its flat underside, thus rendering it useless.
Jose de Creeft began making large-scale assemblages in
Paris, such as
Picador (1925), made of scrap metal, rubber and other materials. 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, Rose Sélavy?, consisting of a small birdcage containing a thermometer, cuttlebone, and 151 marble cubes resembling
sugar cubes. By the time of the Surrealist Exhibition of Objects in 1936 a whole range of sub-classifications had been devised—including found objects, ready-made 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". In the 1960s, found objects were present in both the
Fluxus movement and in
pop art.
Joseph Beuys exhibited modified found objects; examples include rocks with a hole in them stuffed with fur and fat, a van with sledges trailing behind it, and a rusty girder. In 1973,
Michael Craig-Martin claimed of his work
An Oak Tree, "It's not a symbol. I have changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree. I didn't change its appearance. The actual oak tree is physically present, but in the form of a glass of water." ==Other types of found objects==