Duchamp’s critics instantly dismissed the urinal as artistic mischief, but Duchamp was disputing the entire idea of art and the role of the artist. According to Calvin Tompkins, “The artist’s choice gives birth to new ways of seeing and thinking.

The Large Glass has been called a love machine, but it is actually a machine of suffering. Its upper and lower realms are separated from each other forever by a horizon designated as the “bride’s clothes”. The bride is hanging, perhaps from a rope, in an isolated cage, or crucified.

“If we think of kitsch as a ‘style’ of bad taste, we arrive at another paradox, much deeper and more puzzling that the one just pointed out, namely the earlier mentioned possibility of consciously using bad taste (i.e., kitsch) in order to subvert the conventions of a ‘good taste’ that eventually leads to the sclerosis of academicism.

“The movies especially amused me because of their optical side. Instead of making a machine which would turn, as I had done in New York, I said to myself, “Why not turn the film?” That would be a lot simpler. I wasn’t interested in making movies as such; it was simply a more practical way of achieving my optical results.