By John A. Barry And Bill Carmel
E-mail John A. Barry And Bill Carmel
About this blog: John Barry is the creator of trAction Painting, a process/performance genre in which he applies paint to large surfaces with bicycles, roller skates, and other wheeled conveyances. With Bill Carmel and other associates, he has bro...
(More)
About this blog: John Barry is the creator of trAction Painting, a process/performance genre in which he applies paint to large surfaces with bicycles, roller skates, and other wheeled conveyances. With Bill Carmel and other associates, he has brought trAction Painting events to local schools and summer camps. He also creates visual puns. His works are included in several private collections. John has authored/coauthored a dozen books, including Technobabble and Sunburst: The Ascent of Sun Microsystems. John can be contacted at jobarry33@comcast.net or 925-918-7882.
Bill Carmel has 35 years' experience as a professional artist. His fine art paintings, sculptures, and designs are included in private, corporate, and public art collections in the United States, Europe, and Australia. After teaching at Humboldt State University and Southern Illinois University, he returned to the Bay Area, where he remains active in the arts by serving as a co-curator for the Lamorinda Arts Council's Orinda Gallery and by exhibiting throughout the Bay Area. Bill reviews exhibits at SFMOMA, the De Young and Palace of Fine Arts museums, and other Bay Area exhibition venues. Bill can be contacted at billcarmel3@yahoo.com.
(Hide)
View all posts from John A. Barry And Bill Carmel

Currently running at Danville's Village Theater Art Gallery is "Lost and Found: an exhibition of upcycled, recycled, and found objects turned into works of art." I have three pieces in the show, having been making "visual puns" out of found objects for years, because I can't draw. Other exhibitors are Larry Berger, Joe Bologna, Philip Glashoff, Wes Horn, Cassandra Tondro, and Josef Twirbutt. But I'd never really explored the history of found-object art until now.
According to artspace.com, "The amassment and display of found objects for their aesthetic qualities dates back to at least the 16th century, when the collections of individual enthusiasts were displayed in private 'cabinets of curiosities'" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_curiosities). The Germans called these cabinets
Wunderkammer. (German Expressionists also gave us
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [1920, but that's another genre.)
Fast-forward four centuries, when artists started incorporating found objects into sculptural works. Found objects is a literal translation of the French
objets trouvés, a term first used in the early twentieth century, possibly by Marcel Duchamp, who coined the term
ready-made in 1915. Duchamp was a pioneer in found-object art, shocking the art world with his use of a urinal in the work entitled "Fountain."
Found objects are "objects or products with nonart functions, placed into an art context and made part of an artwork". . . what we might today call "repurposing" or "upcycling." The first recorded use of the latter term was by the German artist Reiner Pilz in 1994, according to Wikipedia.
In 1917 Duchamp submitted "Fountain" to a show mounted by the Society of Independent Artists. It was promptly rejected, but it is now considered a classic in the objet trouvé pantheon. "I was interested in ideas?not merely in visual products," said Duchamp. The mantle was then taken up by the Dadaists, Surrealists, Abstract Expressionists, and Popsters such as Andy Warhol, who famously said, "Art is anything you can get away with." The found-object movement started in Europe, but today found-object art is omnipresent.
Some famous found-object works are here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_found_objects. You can find hundred of images on Google.
Or you can see several dozen up close at the Village Theater Art Gallery through April 25.