And yet—isn’t the genius the person who changes everything about his or her field? Thomas Kuhn called this a paradigm shift, before the word “paradigm” got taken over by corporate dipshits and lazy undergrads. If you go by that definition, Duchamp is actually a greater artist than Picasso. If a Renaissance artist time-traveled to the twentieth century, he would’ve recognized what Picasso was doing as painting. But Duchamp would’ve made zero sense to him as art. Duchamp changed everything. But Duchamp doesn’t fulfill an image that we have in our minds of genius.
Not entirely sure I’m buying this argument of “genius as an expression of freedom/sex example: Duchamp/Picasso”
