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Found art, or more commonly and less confusingly, 'Found Object' ( French: objet trouvé) is a term used to describe art created from common objects not normally considered to be artistic (also assemblage). The idea behind found art is that the piece of art derives its significance from the context into which it is put. Found art blurs the traditional lines of what art is and questions the very nature of art itself. Marcel Duchamp's "readymades" are some famous and the earliest examples of found art: for one piece, Fountain, he signed a urinal with the pseudonym "R. Mutt" and mounted it face up. Another piece, Bottle Rack, is simply that: a bottle rack signed by Duchamp.
Picasso's Baboon and Young is a good example of a found object being used to create the basis of a larger piece of work.
Many contemporary artists have used found objects in their art work including
- Arman
- Joseph Cornell
- Tony Cragg
- Mark Divo
- Salvador Dalí
- Marcel Duchamp
- David Mach
- Cornelia Parker
- Giuseppe Penone
- Pablo Picasso
- Robert Rauschenberg
- Daniel SpoerriDaniel Spoerri (born Daniel Isaac Feinstein 27 March, 1930) is a Romanian-born French dancer and performance artist. Spoerri founded a restaurant serving unusual food, where he became famous for gluing the plates to the tables. In the 1990s he had a one m
- Kurt SchwittersKurt Schwitters ( June 20, 1887 January 8, 1948) was a German painter, who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters participated in the Dada movement during and after World War I. His particular contribution to that group was his Merz works, art pieces bu
Composers have often used found sound in compositions, examples including John CageJohn Milton Cage ( September 5, 1912 August 12, 1992) was an experimental music composer and writer, possibly best known (some might say notorious) for his piece 4 33 often described (somewhat erroneously) as "four and a half minutes of silence. He was an and Nicolas CollinsNicolas Collins (born March 26, 1954 in New York City) is an composer of mostly electronic music and former student of Alvin Lucier. He often uses home-made electronics and found sound such as skipping CD players or radio broadcast and is currently Editor. Poets, too, create art out of non-literary writing; Cordelia McGuire turned a funeral home's want ad into a poem entitled Embalmer just by adding line breaks.
Found art features in Jean-Pierre JeunetJean-Pierre Jeunet Jean-Pierre Jeunet (born 3 September 1953, Loire France) is a French film director. Many of Jeunet's earlier films, collaborations with designer and co-director Marc Caro, are set in a dystopic retro-future, culminating in the gritty bu's film Amelie
1 See also
- List of found artBelow is a list of pieces, by artist, which are or include found objects, followed by the objects. Marcel Duchamp : Fountain urinal : Bottle rack bottle rack : In advance of a broken arm snow shovel Nicolas Collins : Still Lives (1992), ten measures of a
- Found poetryFound poetry is the rearrangment of words or phrases taken randomly from other sources (example: clipped newspaper headlines, bits of advertising copy, handwritten cards pulled from a hat) in a manner that gives the rearranged words a completely new meani
- Collage
- Cut-up technique
- Plunderphonics
- Pop art
- Modernism
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