Readymades Already Made?

While flipping through my humanities book trying to find something to blog about, I came across the readymades Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. I remembered Duchamp from his painting of The Nude Descending the Staircase, where to some people, the painting may look like a just a pile of wooden shingles, and to others, it looks like a person walking down a staircase. I was the latter of these people and I loved that painting. I was almost going to blog about that certain painting, but after doing more research on Duchamp and seeing his readymades, they inspired me to write about them more.

A readymade that I found was very interesting was the Bicycle Wheel, where Duchamp placed a unicycle wheel on top of a wooden stool and spun the wheel around.

Now the question you may ask is "Is this really art? He hardly did anything! I could do that!" Well, my response is yes, it is. It doesn't matter if he barely did anything. Since this was Duchamp's first readymade creation, I suppose he can call it whatever he likes since he was the one who came up with the idea first, not anyone else. The readymades are almost like an effort to break every rule in art. Instead of catching your eye, it forces your mind to think in a new way.

The readymade is almost like a sculpture. You can almost see the resemblence of a person. The body is the wooden stool, the neck is the bicycle fork, the head is the wheel, and the eye is in the middle of the wheel. Here is a video of the Bicycle Wheel in motion. Duchamp is quoted as saying "I enjoyed looking at it, just as I enjoy looking at the flames dancing in the fireplace." Does it remind you of flames?

Yeah, I know it's a short video, but you get the idea. Here's another readymade that really made me laugh when I was told what the letters on the bottom of the picture meant. I hope it will make you laugh as well.

The title, L.H.O.O.Q., when pronounced in French, puns the phrase "Elle a chaud au cul", translating in English as "She has a hot ass" or "Her ass is on fire." Did it make you laugh?