Found object is an everyday object presented as art with little or no modification — a category invented by marcel duchamp's readymades in 1913.
The found object (French: 'objet trouvé') is an everyday article of manufacture or nature that an artist designates as art with minimal alteration. The genre begins decisively with Marcel Duchamp's 'readymades' from 1913 onward: a bicycle wheel mounted on a stool ('Bicycle Wheel', 1913), a snow shovel ('In Advance of the Broken Arm', 1915), and most famously 'Fountain' (1917), a porcelain urinal signed 'R. Mutt 1917' and submitted to the Society of Independent Artists exhibition in New York. The piece was rejected, the original lost, and the gesture became one of the most consequential in modern art: Duchamp had argued that art was a matter of decision, not of craft. The Surrealists, particularly Méret Oppenheim ('Object', a fur-lined teacup, 1936), extended the practice. Joseph Cornell built poetic boxes from collected fragments. Robert Rauschenberg's 'Combines' from the 1950s incorporated stuffed goats, tyres, and other detritus. The found object opened the door to assemblage, conceptual art, and most subsequent avant-garde practice.