The Readymade Is Already Made

Of the twentieth-century art gods (Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol), Marcel Duchamp elicits no middle road. He is either revered as a godlike figure of contemporary art or disdained as a charlatan. Curators, artists, critics and dealers praise his import in reframing and redefining what is art and how we view it. In fact, the other night at a dinner party seated amongst a crowd of the aforementioned art-world folk, I asked, "Are we done with Duchamp?...