DUCHAMP WON,
PICASSO LOST
by James Croak



Judith Collins, Sculpture Today, Phaidon, 454 pp., $69.95.

I once joked with a Brit writer at the Art Basel Miami Beach solstice that I could teach 20th-century art history in four words: "Duchamp won, Picasso lost." Only for amusement, I am sure, he published my wisecrack in the London Financial Times and my inbox began spewing flames as if I had pulled a Christopher Hitchens and smacked Mother Teresa. "Just what did you mean by that?" was the typical query from an atypically civil writer.

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