In order to explore the deeply ambiguous relationship between modern art and popular culture, Jeffrey Weiss focuses on the work of Picasso and Duchamp in France in the first two decades of this century. Placing equal emphasis on art and criticism, the book links Picasso's innovations in Cubist collage to the puns and topical jokes of the music-hall, the theatrical revue, and the daily papers, while Duchamp's readymades and Large Glass are reinterpreted through their relationship to the socio-cultural practice of hoax.