"Displayed at an angle and out of its normal context, it was oddly beautiful"
I disagree, the toilet was not "oddly beautiful" and displaying it at an angle and out of its normal context didn't make it any more "oddly beautiful."
It was a sort-of clever "troll" mocking the pretentiousness of the "art crowd" and it's significant because 100 years later the "art crowd" is still, how to put it? "Butthurt" over Duchamp's mockery of them.
The "troll" stung so bad that 100 years later they are still embarrassed, even humiliated, by it. 100 years of terrible nonsense and thousand-word essays of bullshit and they still haven't gotten over it.
Which I guess means that Duchamp made a piece of very significant art.
That seems incorrect. The contemporary fine-art world, or certainly the public-gallery, taxpayer-funded side of it at least, has been dominated by conceptual art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_art for decades now: in other words, by people chasing heavily diminished returns on Duchamp's old hack. It's hard to imagine that the people adulating and spending millions on Damien Hirst's bisected shark and other, even slighter stuff are still upset about Duchamp.
I disagree, the toilet was not "oddly beautiful" and displaying it at an angle and out of its normal context didn't make it any more "oddly beautiful."
It was a sort-of clever "troll" mocking the pretentiousness of the "art crowd" and it's significant because 100 years later the "art crowd" is still, how to put it? "Butthurt" over Duchamp's mockery of them.
The "troll" stung so bad that 100 years later they are still embarrassed, even humiliated, by it. 100 years of terrible nonsense and thousand-word essays of bullshit and they still haven't gotten over it.
Which I guess means that Duchamp made a piece of very significant art.