Duchamp's urinal readymade

Duchamp's urinal readymade serves as an example of how an ordinary object can acquire the status of art through the position it occupies, rather than through a special quality in its material. The book uses this contrast to illuminate a parallel claim about truth: neither artistic status nor truth is simply an inherent property waiting to be found in the object or statement itself.

Definition and Status

The readymade is presented through the comparison between Duchamp's urinal and a urinal in a nearby public lavatory. The argument identifies no material property that distinguishes the two. What changes is the place assigned to the object: when the urinal occupies the place of a work of art, it counts as art. Its status is therefore relational and formal, not a consequence of a unique substance or appearance.

Role in the Argument

The example makes concrete the book's account of truth as that which makes propositions true, rather than a quality contained within propositions. In the surrounding argument, a proposition's authority depends on being spoken from the position of truth; correspondingly, the urinal's artistic status depends on its placement within the position of art. The comparison does not equate an artwork with a true statement, but uses the readymade to show how status can arise from a formal position rather than from an object's intrinsic features.

Significance

By setting the readymade beside the ordinary lavatory urinal, the example unsettles the assumption that a thing's identity or value can be explained by its material properties alone. It gives the book a compact model for its broader distinction between intrinsic content and the position that confers significance: the object remains materially indistinguishable, while its standing changes with the place it occupies.