"The `readymades,’as Duchamp called them, borrowing an English word he picked up in New York, are usually understood as critical pranks that show how arbitrary is the marriage of object and meaning or intent in traditional artworks.

"In `The Private Worlds of Marcel Duchamp,’Jerrold Seigel, professor of history at New York University, has a less confrontational view of Duchamp that sets the artist apart from the refractory high jinks of Dada with which he is commonly associated."