What Made Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades So Revolutionary?

When does something become a work of art? A canvas once it’s been painted? A block of marble once it’s been carved? For Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), the answer was much more direct and far more radical: Anything—indeed, everything—could be art if an artist deemed it so. “An ordinary object,” he said, can be “elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.” This notion, which found expression in his iconic Readymades,