Duchamp opened up a small distinct area of liberty
to which scores of younger artists found themselves
admitted. The freedom he offered was fairly gratuitous.
It was the dandy's right to perfect a gesture on as
small a scale as you wanted. Duchamp invented a category
he called "infra-mince" ("sub-tiny"); it was occupied,
for instance, by the difference in weight between a clean
shirt and the same shirt worn once. Infra-mince was the
weight of Duchamp's little phial of Paris air . .  In one
sense, to bother with such insignificances is pure dandyism,
doodling, a way of filling time. But in another, it claims
a critical purpose. It says, in effect: art, in the larger
frame of things, is small, and one only makes it to think
a little more clearly.<p><p>

(from Robert Hughes, "The Shock of the New", p. 382)