Readymade

 

The poet packs into a box;

Rocker, singer-songwriter, rapper;

Stickers, stubs, buttons, painted rocks;

Postcards, programs, pages, drafted chapters.

 

A collection larger than the sum of its parts;

It ain’t no thing. Bring it. Sing it. Do it.

Scribble, type, meter, rhyme, for love of arts;

Drum beats, Scraps, paper clips, poker chips, made to fit.

 

Artifacts, art and facts, paintings, pain and suffering;

Sculpture, texture, contour, negative space;

Ephemeral printing, consumer packaging, pandemic timing;

Reuse, recycle, reclaim, never the same face.

 

Fear the consequences, count the blessings;

Cut, paste, hesitate, fascinate;

Freezing, warming, climate change, confessing;

Appropriate, mitigate, celebrate.

Marcel Duchamp 1887–1968  Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2, 1912 (Philadelphia Museum of Art), created a sensation at the 1913 New York Armory Show. Duchamp did very little painting after 1912, creating the first of his 'readymades' in 1913. These were ordinary objects of everyday use, sometimes slightly altered, and designated works of art by the artist. His earliest readymades included Bicycle Wheel (1913), a wheel mounted on a wooden stool, and a snow shovel entitled In Advance of the Broken Arm (1915). One of his best-known pieces is a urinal, titled Fountain and signed 'R. Mutt', which he submitted to an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York in 1917.