Another Man’s Treasure: The Rhetorical Power of Remixed Objects in Anti-Retinal Art

摘要: Was it a Madonna, a “cross between a Buddha and a veiled woman,” an erect penis, or nothing more than an autographed upside-down urinal? And what was it trying to say? Regardless of whether the artist was a baroness whose identity was concealed because she was a woman or because the French-American painter, R. Mutt, whose name it bears was relatively unknown, Duchamp’s “Fountain”—bizarre or brilliant depending on your point of view—has profoundly impacted the evolution of art. This seminal expression of what Duchamp coined “readymade” art paved the way for the use of everyday objects, and in turn, unusable and discarded material in artworks. This article focuses on art created from the two latter forms: those artefacts and materials that fell out of use through redundancy or retirement, or those that were willfully or accidentally discarded. It argues that rhetoric can be non-verbal and that visual …