Urban Ready Mades: a new turn with an efficacious concept.

In 1913 the French artist Marcel Duchamp shook the established art scene on it's foundations by assembling a bike wheel on a bar stool and presenting this as art. Four years later he did it again by signing an urinoir under the alias R. Mutt and sending this to an artshow as an artwork. He called these types of works 'ready mades'. This was met with scorn and incomprehension, but the foundation of the conceptual art was made.

Duchamp's work was meant primarily as a statement with which he wanted to examine the foundations of western art critically. By taking objects out of their context and declaring them art, Duchamp asked for attention for the own form language of daily life. That the beauty of the objects was important to him is a general misconception. He wanted to add a new meaning to an existing object, meanwhile protesting against the habitual image culture. By choosing common, mass-produced objects, Duchamp doubted the unicity of artworks. Up to then the fact that every work of art is unique, was an essential characteristic of art. Duchamp wanted to drop this criterion and replace this by the choice and the idea of an artist behind the artwork, this would then become the most important motivation of a work of art. Especially pop-art artists were inspired by Duchamp's working method. Known examples are the Brillo boxes or the Campbell soup cans that Andy Warhol centralized in his work. The most essential characteristic of a ready made is that an artist declares a daily object art and thereby gives objects a new meaning, apart of their original context. Everything can be exalted to a ready made; the choice of the artists makes the difference.

With this in mind, the Dutch artist couple Marcello&Els, has given a new dimension to the concept ready made, 90 years after Duchamp's bike wheel. They replaced the area for attention from an object to an urban environment. By declaring an urban view a ready made, they want to force the beholder to look at their environment in another manner and let the line between reality and art disappear. Art is literally on the street and shapes the environment of all. By applying the concept of the ready made on an urban environment, the beholder is able to be a part of the art work and becomes a fellow of it in the most literal way. But something is not just an urban ready made. The exaltation to art must be celebrated by the usual rituals surrounding art, such as an official gathering with catering, the placing of a sign and the audiovisual recording.

By giving other artists the opportunity to declare their own urban ready made, within certain boundaries, they do Duchamp's choice to revoke the unicity of art justice. The concept ready made has gotten a new dimension.

2006 Drs. Michel P. van Maarseveen - Director Drents Museum - The Netherlands