@atomicpoet I love Duchamp!!! It is good to point out that Duchamp's "readymades" - of which Fountain is the famous example, a bottle drying rack is another - were specifically a commentary on the fact that he could put his name on anything and call it art. He was already an established artist, using his name to push the notion of "art". In fact "poverty" can be a potential translation of "R Mutt" in German, which gives it a little more depth than just being a urinal.
But otherwise, Duchamp was an immaculately detailed and strenuously crafty artist, so the few readymades were somewhat in opposition to what he regularly produced. He famously spent decades on some sculptures.
Jasper Johns is the better readymades example in your metaphor, IMHO. His style centered around the nearly unmodified found-object as art.