Marcel Duchamp the Broken Arm", followed soon after. His "Fountain", a urinal signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt", shocked the art world in 1917. "Fountain" was selected in 2004 as "the most influential artwork of the 20th century" by 500 renowned artists and historians. In 1919, Duchamp made a parody of the "Mona Lisa" by adorning a cheap reproduction of the painting with a mustache and goatee. To this he added the inscription "L.H.O.O.Q.", a phonetic game which, when read out loud in French quickly sounds like ""Elle a chaud au cul"". This can be translated as "She has a hot ass,"
Readymades of Marcel Duchamp 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 other methods of expression. As an antidote to retinal art he began creating readymades at a time (1914) when the term was commonly used in the United States to describe manufactured items to