Kant after Duchamp (October Books)

Kant after Duchamp (October Books) by Thierry de Duve. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780262540940.

Kant after Duchamp brings together eight essays around a central thesis with many implications for the history of avant-gardes. Although Duchamps ready mades broke with all previously known styles, de Duve observes that he made the logic of modernist art practice the subject matter of his work, a shift in aesthetic judgment that replaced the classical "this is beautiful" with "this is art." De Duve employs this shift (replacing the word "beauty" by the word "art") in a rereading of Kants Critique of Judgment that reveals the hidden links between the radical experiments of Duchamp and the Dadaists and mainstream pictorial modernism.