I appreciate your description of Duchamp and his critique of
commodities but you're losing me when you tie this to "artistic
skill."  I think Duchamp was critical of most art objects, decrying
"retinal art" which often requires a great deal of of artistic 
skill to produce. (Duchamp was a skilled painter who abandoned the medium).  To me it seems he was much more interested in
the art idea than the object but I don't see how he was particularly
invested in "artistic skill".

Greg 
gboozell@juno.com



-- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol@jhu.edu> wrote:

I also think that this emphasis of artistic skill was the message of Duchamp and Co. in the era where objects of art became capitalist commodity that can be bought, owned, preserve or add "value" (i.e. exchange value), and sold. The multiple "originals" created by Duchamp and finally the toilet seat (or a bicycle wheel) placed in an art gallery were radical manifestations of that idea.  It was not the object that can be bought, owned and sold that matters, as Duchamp devised clever means to undercut the commercial value of the work art embedded in the notion of "original" (which implied limited supply and owner control of that supply) first by producing several of them,
and then by using mass produced objects.  And if it was the object, then it must have been the creative act of the artist-demiurge that produced that object.