found object
FOWND OB-jekt
faʊnd ˈɒbdʒɛktListen
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Dictionary meaning
an object not made by the artist but selected and presented as art, whose transformation into artwork occurs through the act of selection, framing, and contextualisation rather than through fabrication; the found object (objet trouvé) entered Western art history through the Dada movement and Marcel Duchamp's readymades — most famously a commercially produced urinal exhibited as Fountain in 1917 — which challenged the definition of art by insisting that the artist's conceptual gesture, not technical skill or craft, constitutes the artwork; found objects have been central to assemblage, Pop Art, Arte Povera, and installation art, and continue to raise questions about the boundaries between art and everyday life, authorship and appropriation
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