letting go of duchamp

In my younger years, I had a developing awareness of the power of art; I see that power more in the past than the present and it bothers me. Then, art was the medium that could give tactile reality to the soul’s desire to belong to a greater reality – to be part of a heaven that enveloped the senses, the body the mind and the spirit – all together, all at one time. However, art was not only a window to Olympus, Elysium, Nirvana, Paradise, Heaven – it was a presence, a metaphor, created by the mind and body together, to be experienced all at once; an epiphany, sometimes a revelation, but always embodied in the material world. Last year I visited the the 20th century Modern displays at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and became very aware again of the key themes of modernity fragmentation and the machine - broadly, the relationship of man and machine; speed, dynamism, rotational energy, the grid, social fragmentation, alienation, mass production, mediated reality and, essentially, at its co...