Marcel Duchamp- a legend in his own mind or why I think he is pompous and overrated.

It is his work that has died- this is his own art obituary. He was one of the first artists to pull the wool over the collective public's eyes and the stupid public went along with it because they were too cowardly to do otherwise. Why does a painting have to be shocking, outrageous or surprising to be good? He limits the definition of art to suit his own argument and his own work. Why have we ever listened to this charlatan, this art goon?


Marcel Duchamp once said that "after 40 or 50 years a picture dies, because its freshness disappears. Sculpture also dies. . . . I think a picture dies after a few years like the man who painted it. Afterwards it’s called the history of art." The painting and sculpture that seemed so outrageous -- surprising, even shocking -- at the beginning of the 20th century was almost a century old by its end, and had long since become part of art history.