When we get a big snowstorm, Duchamp’s snow shovel, his first American Readymade, circulates as a seasonal meme. The shovel, stripped bare of its function in 1915 when Duchamp hung it in his studio and titled it In Advance of the Broken Arm, now circles back humorously to utility. We need snow shovels in these moments.

The title is both funny ha-ha and funny odd, although Duchamp claimed it was unrelated to the work: “Obviously, I was hoping it was without sense, but deep down everything ends up having some.” In curator Helen Molesworth’s phrase, In Advance becomes “a little machine for slapstick,” if not physically, then mentally. Does one’s arm break shoveling snow?

Duchamp wanted none of art’s encumbrances: preciousness, meaning, “retinal pleasure,” even traces of the artist’s hand. He called taste—good or bad—the greatest enemy of art, while admitting that total absence of taste is impossible: “but at least I have tried to remain as aloof as possible, and don’t think for one minute this hasn’t been a difficult task.”

But once there’s any whiff of success, the anti-art becomes, inevitably, another sacred relic. Thus In Advance has come full circle: a meaningless, mass-produced tool turned small private joke in an artist’s studio; the original discarded; a meticulous, handcrafted 1960s reproduction—now very much an encumbered artwork—and finally, a facsimile passed around as a one-liner for art nerds during a snowstorm, reduced to a trivial meme. Même. The art joke spoofed by the Internet, even.

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Links:

• “Breaking ground: how Marcel Duchamp turned an ordinary shovel into one of the most extraordinary objects in the history of art,” Christie’s, October 23, 2024

  
  

• Marcel Duchamp, In Advance of the Broken Arm - MoMA

  
  

• Marcel Duchamp, In Advance of the Broken Arm - Centre Pompidou

  
  

• Tate Modern glossary: Readymade

  
  

• “(Ab)Using Marcel Duchamp: The Concept of the Readymade in Post-War and Contemporary American Art,” by Thomas Girst, toutfait, April 1, 2003

  
  

• Video: Duchamp, In Advance of the Broken Arm, Smarthistory, September 2, 2012

This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

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