The recently closed show at New York’s Luhring Augustine Gallery, The Irreverent Object: European Sculpture from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, gave connoisseurs a chance to view what amounts to the evolution of the readymade art object and prompted discussion of the family resemblance between the exhibits and the work of Marcel Duchamp. What role does humor play? Does bringing the “irrelevant” object into the museum necessarily entail a certain “irreverent” posture, or is the production of readymade art a deadly serious enterprise?

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