Marcel Duchamp: The Failed Messiah

Marcel Duchamp's gift to artists was similar to the Marquis de Sade's gift to sadists—relief from moral restraints, accountability, guilt, and shame. Wayne Andersen will convince you that Duchamp was not the great artist that so many in the academic and museum world believe him to be. Rather, he was a great con artist who spread his charm and wit over the New York art scene. He was clever in his evasive insecurity and so exaggerated that his silly witticisms are still published today as serious. Duchamp was like an alien element that fragmented modern art with the impact of a meteor. The birth of postmodernism (some people say) spelled the end of modernism, the end of historical progress, just as that meteor’s impact meant the end of evolution. Is any of this true?