“Where did this idea that anything could be a work of art come from? It’s generally believed to have come from Marcel Duchamp. In 1917, a urinal was sent to an art exhibition in New York, supposedly by Duchamp. But recent research has shown that the urinal was actually submitted by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Her gesture was an early feminist attack on a male society. She didn’t claim the urinal was a work of art. She was taking the piss. Duchamp stole her idea much later when he began to promote himself as the founding father of modern art.”
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Wait, what? If ever a passage was crying out for a hyperlink…
(via felixsalmon)