The term, found art, or more commonly, found object (French: objet trouvé) describes art created from common objects that are not normally considered art.
Found art derives significance from the context into which it is placed, thus blurring the traditional distinction of what is art, and what is not art, and challenges the nature of art.
Marcel Duchamp coined the term readymade in 1915 to describe his found art. His Fountaine (Fountain), a urinal which he signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt", shocked the art world in 1917. The jury of the 1917 The Society of Independent Artists show rejected the piece. Bottle Rack is a bottle drying rack signed by Duchamp. (Research by art historian Rhonda Roland Shearer indicates that Duchamp may have fabricated his found objects. Exhaustive research of mundane items like snow shovels and bottle racks in use at the time failed to reveal identical matches. The urinal, upon close inspection, is non-functional.)
Pablo Picasso used found objects as the basis for Baboon and Young.
Many contemporary artists use found objects in their art. A few are,
Music composers use found sound in their compositions. Examples include John Cage and Nicolas Collins. Poets, too, create art out of non-literary writing. Cordelia McGuire turned a funeral home classified advertisement into a poem entitled Embalmer by adding line breaks. Found art features in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film Amelie.
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