Changing Concepts of Marcel Duchamp's Ready-made

Abstract

Marcel Duchamp's Ready-made has long been considered a pioneer in the anti-visual, anti-aesthetic and conceptual arts, which decisively influenced the historical development of contemporary American art after abstract expressionism. Surveying the discourse of Duchamp, however, we see that he had changed his concept of the ready-made depending on art historical conditions. This paper aims to first point out that the ready-made, anti-aesthetic and conceptual in nature, in fact, emerged and came to the fore simultaneously with the very arts which had been considered to be influenced by the ready-made; and second, to elucidate the significant role Clement Greenberg's formalist criticism played, which was already distinguished at that time, in the formation of the concept of the ready-made. It is thought that during the 1960's Duchamp intentionally contrasted his idea of the ready-made and Greensburg's American modernism, a binary which, to this day, still functions as the theoretical basis for the understanding of the history of contemporary art.