Marcel Duchamp championed the term ‘readymade’ after moving from Paris to New York in 1915. The Bicycle Wheel was the most groundbreaking piece from the earliest examples of Duchamp’s readymades. At one point, Duchamp found others to do much of the work for him: for example, the gallery owner Sidney Janis brought a wheel from Paris, and found the stool in Brooklyn. Duchamp only put them together. To Duchamp, the concept of the transmission of readymades became important more than its visual appearance. Duchamp’s own idea was that “it is the artist who defines what is art.” Contrary to that, it is the art world that has attached significance to the Bicycle Wheel by giving it the status of art and treating it as such.