ReadyMade Revisited
ReadyMade Magazine was a do-it-yourself magazine that launched in 2001 in Berkeley, California. It ran for 10 years, and employed more than 75 humans and/or human lookalikes. ReadyMade had an ahead of its times approach to the DIY schema.
I loved it:
From the ecocentric upcycled projects to its early embrace of otherhood — it spoke to me.
I became aware of the magazine in August of 2002 shortly after my 32nd birthday. My age and rurality of my residence in Missouri, put me on the outside edge of the target demographic. It didn’t matter, because I loved trying the music, DIYs, and recipes that it supplied to our little home every other month.
ReadyMade got its name from the oft derided art of Marcel Duchamp. The term readymade art was made up by Duchamp in 1916. It was used to describe prefabricated, often mass-produced objects isolated from their intended use and elevated to the status of art by the artist choosing and designating them as such. The inaugural issue included a photo of Duchamp’s most famous, and probably most hated piece of art, a porcelain urinal turned drinking fountain signed R. Mutt - one of his many pseudonyms — in sloppy paint.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not that thirsty.
After finding the magazine, and getting as obsessed as only a fangirl can, I ordered the back issues from an online auction site. By the time the company abruptly scrapped the publication I owned more than 50 issues and a book.
Over the ten years since the last issue I had lost some installments because of damage, lending them out, and moving out of our home of 30 years. Over the past few weeks, thanks to the glory of the internet and too much time on my hands, I have been able to fill in the gaps in my collection.
For the next several weeks (Who are we kidding? It could be months, years, or decades.) I’m going to revisit each issue, try out projects and recipes, check out the artists and musicians, and maybe even do a where are they now of the past writers and contributors.
I hope you’ll join me as we revisit ReadyMade.
Details
Issue date: Winter 2001-2002
Issue number: 1
Pages: 76
Chief Editor: Shoshana Berger
Publisher: Grace Hawthorne
Cover photo: Kate Lacey
Contributors: Alan Deutschman, Adrian Tomine, Sherif Shalaby, Anthony Discenza, Jenn Stroud Rossmann, Josh Greene, Tim Parsons, Haywood Augustus Rose, Rachel Hutton, Evan Ratcliff, Nik Schulz, Boym Partners, James Chiang, Diane Goodman, Kate Lacey, Adrian Van Allen, Steve Dodds, Neal Pollack
References
https://tinyurl.com/yb5mgjbc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyMade_(magazine)
https://www.moma.org/collection/terms/88
By Marcel Duchamp - NPR arthistory.about.com, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74693078
