DUCHAMP’S READY-MADES: BEYOND THE DIALECTICS OF ART AND ANTI-ART
DUCHAMP’S READY-MADES: BEYOND THE DIALECTICS OF ART AND ANTI-ART

Summary/Abstract: This paper re-evaluates Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades in response to dialectical critiques which privileged their anti-artistic status as objects which transcended the processes of production, of manufacture and labour associated with the creation of works of art. It analyses Duchamp’s play on the simulacral nature of the commodity in order to expose and counter the erosion of art by commercialization. I argue that the ready-made brings art face to face with the commodity as its mirror image in a strategic stand-off that cannot be resolved by simply privileging anti-art over art. Fuelled by the opposition of these terms, the ready-mades emerge as conceptual devices which demonstrate the impossibility of defining art by arresting its meanings.

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