Dave Beech, Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia Dave Beech links Picabia's monster paintings to current artists such as Mark McGowan, Laura Oldfield Ford and Freee by drawing out a shared commitment to produce art that does without the privileges of cultural capital, taste, style and so on. Picabia's critique of art - his anti-art - was a full-on philistinism (his version of avant-garde deskilling was an attack on taste as much as craft) even if it was mainly pictorial. Today artists pursue the challenge to art without restricting themselves to the pictorial or questions of style. McGowan uses outrageous performances to create controversy; Laura Oldfield Ford uses the formats of subcultural activism to put the artist in the thick of things; while the collective Freee use the technologies of the mass media to establish small counter-public spheres.