Posted by Glenn Harvey on November 04, 19102 at 14:39:24:
In Reply to: Specific act which Duchamp activate the Ready Made posted by Elisa Rugarcia on October 11, 19102 at 09:46:42:
Not a straightforward question to answer - but the first 'unassisted' readymade - and named as such by Duchamp (albeit after the event) is generally considered to be the 'Bottle Dryer (Bottlerack) of 1914. Duchamp in a letter from New York to his sister Suzanne in Paris asked her
to sign it '(after) Marcel Duchamp'. It's thought she never did this as it had already been thrown out as junk by this time...
The earlier 'Bicycle Wheel' (1913) is generally considered to be the first 'assisted' readymade...but Duchamp gave his friend Max Bergmann a signed gift dated 1910 (a kind of toy) which may also be a kind of readymade - although Duchamp never assigned this particular object that label.
There is a theory that none of the 'readymades' are not what they 'appear' to be - for this see various articles by Rhonda Shearer in 'tout-fait' the online Marcel Duchamp Studies Journal.
P.S. You could probably find images of these items if you go into 'Google' and search the titles under the 'Image' search function.