What 1913 Marcel Duchamp artwork is widely regarded as the first readymade?

Marcel Duchamp’s 1913 artwork Bicycle Wheel is widely regarded as the first readymade.

The work consists of a bicycle wheel mounted upside down on a kitchen stool. Duchamp later described the pleasure of watching the wheel turn, but its larger importance lies in the challenge it posed to traditional ideas about artistic skill and originality. By selecting and presenting an ordinary manufactured object, he shifted attention toward the artist’s decision.

Duchamp called the original work a “readymade,” a term that became central to avant-garde art. The 1913 version was lost, and Duchamp later authorized replicas. This makes the work’s history different from that of Fountain, his 1917 urinal readymade.

Bicycle Wheel is often associated with Dada rather than Surrealism, but Duchamp’s ideas strongly influenced later Surrealist artists. It is therefore important not to confuse its date and status with Fountain, which came four years later.