What is an Urban Ready Made?
An Urban Ready Made (URM) is a street, a building, a view, an object or an event in an urban- or industrial environment, where a conjunction of circumstances cause beauty and art. When an artist or architect declares this (with some ritual proceedings) art, it becomes an Urban Ready Made.

Our goals
With the Urban Ready Mades Project we would like to bring art closer to people. Art doesn't have to be difficult to understand. You can find beauty everywhere and to enjoy art you don't have to visit a museum or an exposition. We hope our project let people realize that they can find art and beauty in their own city. Marcello & Els, the founders of the project, want to give other artists and architects a chance to declare an URM in their own surroundings and join this unique concept. This way there will grow a "gesammtkunstwerk" (a collective work of art) of thousands of URM's, which will go beyond borders. Firstly this is going to take place in the form of a virtual exhibition on the World Wide Web, crossing virtual borders. In the year 2010 it will become a travelling exhibition, kicking off in The Hague.

Our Inspiration
nspired by the founder of the ready-made Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), the artists couple Marcello & Els from The Hague thought up the Urban Ready Made. Duchamp chose mass-produced products and daily used objects to try to make people reflect differently upon the concept of art. Duchamp's ready-mades consisted of simple everyday objects, of which the urinal that he put in a museum with the title "Fountain" (1917) is the most famous example.

A little history
Ready Mades are not new (Urban Ready Mades are!). The definition of a ready-made is an object selected and designated as art; the name was coined by the French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). Duchamp's first ready-made, "Bicycle Wheel" (1913), consisting of a wheel mounted on a stool, was his way of protesting the excessive importance attached to works of art. By selecting mass-produced, commonplace objects, Duchamp attempted to destroy the notion of the uniqueness... Other famous artists like Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons used ready-mades very often in their work.

Statement
Drs. Michel P. van Maarseveen, historian and director of "Drents Museum" (Assen, The Netherlands) tells about the URM and their founders.