© Adagp, Paris
“A work of art is completed by the viewer.”
Marcel Duchamp, inventor of the concept of the ready-made (or "the found object"), is a key figure in the history of art. An atypical artist, the inventor quickly gave up painting and was influenced by Dadaism and surrealism, which prompted him to prioritize the idea over the result. Duchamp cultivates a certain art of derision, even nihilism. Chance and disguise played an active role in his artistic imagination. In the 1920s, Duchamp created for himself an androgynous alter ego, Rose Sélavy, a character who became a work in itself. Marcel Duchamp expanded the materials used in art but also showed a taste for complex aesthetic questions that would lead to conceptual art in the 70s.