This slim volume has only one fault. It has no illustrations. So you’ll have to do some Googling or visit the current Duchamp exhibition at MoMA (until 22 August) if you want to know what ‘The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even’ looks like. Otherwise it’s perfect – wittily written and packed with many fascinating characters besides the ever intriguing Marcel Duchamp.

He didn’t actually arrive in New York until 1915, but when he did he found himself already famous. His ‘Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2’ had been included in the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art, alongside works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse and Braque, and completely stole the show. Duchamp didn’t even know the painting was being exhibited. He was still in Paris studying to be a librarian. He’d previously submitted it to the Salon des Independants in Paris but they’d asked him to change the title and he whisked it away in a huff. He decided to qualify as a librarian because ‘I wanted a nice quiet job. I was through with the world of the artists.’

But when he sailed to New York to escape the war, he found himself welcomed as the Nude-Descending-a-Staircase Man. He gave dozens of press interviews and put out provocative statements:

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If only America would realise that the art of Europe is finished – dead – and that America is the country of the art of........

© The Spectator