Nearly nine decades after Marcel Duchamp and Bronia Perlmutter posed nude as Adam and Eve, the image is still causing trouble. Readers of the Lubbock, TX Avalanche-Journal are debating whether an earthenware interpretation of Man Ray’s original photograph is “offensive.”

Interestingly, the controversy does not revolve around the potentially radical suggestion that the quintessentially modern Duchamp could impersonate the fundamentally archaic progenitor of humanity — a tempting proposition for would-be heretics — but that he wasn’t pretty enough. The offended reader argues that Adam must have a “perfect physique” to reflect the image of God; the sculpture’s defender counters that in fact Adam is “whimsical and well-modeled.”

Nine decades and more on, the retinal clearly retains its primacy in the world of art.

Source