Found object originates from the French
objet trouvé, describing
art created from undisguised, but often modified,
objects or
products that are not normally considered art, often because they already have a non-art function.
Pablo Picasso first publicly utilized the idea when he pasted a printed image of chair caning onto his painting titled
Still Life with Chair Caning (1912).
Marcel Duchamp is thought to have perfected the concept several years later when he made a series of
ready-mades, consisting of completely unaltered everyday objects selected by Duchamp and designated as art. The most famous example is
Fountain (1917), a standard urinal purchased from a hardware store and displayed on a pedestal, resting on its side. In its strictest sense art term "ready-made" is applied exclusively to works produced by Marcel Duchamp, who borrowed the term from the clothing industry while living in New York, and especially to works dating from 1913 to 1921.