Marcel Duchamp's Fountain as photographed byAlfred Stieglitz

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In his article Idol Thoughts, Jerry Saltz considers the commonly held view that Duchamp is"an 'anti-artist' and an 'iconoclast.'".  Saltz believes this view is "entirely false" and in fact Duchamp "wasn't against art at all; he was against the hypocritical aura surrounding it".  Instead of seeking to destroy art, Duchamp's work "is an incarnation of the invisible essence of art" that combines image and idea in a way that had never been done before.