Readymades of Marcel Duchamp not the true "Mona Lisa", but Duchamp's own slightly-different version that he modelled partly after himself. The inference of Shearer's viewpoint is that Duchamp was creating an even larger joke than he admitted. Readymades of Marcel Duchamp The readymades of Marcel Duchamp are ordinary manufactured objects that the artist selected and modified, as an antidote to what he called "retinal art". By simply choosing the object (or objects) and repositioning or joining, titling and signing it, the Found object became art. Duchamp was not interested in what he called "retinal art" — art that was only visual — and sought
Fountain (Duchamp) porcelain, with a signature reproduced in black paint. Of all the artworks in this series of readymades, "Fountain" is perhaps the best known because the symbolic meaning of the toilet takes the conceptual challenge posed by the readymades to their most visceral extreme. Similarly, philosopher Stephen Hicks argued that Duchamp, who was quite familiar with the history of European art, was obviously making a provocative statement with "Fountain": Since the photograph taken by Stieglitz is the only image of the original sculpture, there are some interpretations of "Fountain" by looking not only at reproductions but this particular photograph. Tomkins notes