Duchamp was a leader of Dadaism, a movement that was built upon the notion of shaking up art standards, and even being "anti-art."
Beyond that, far abstract work has almost always struggled to find a foothold in the art world, especially when it's new. I've always thought this to be so because the masses have a hard time enjoying something that challenges their way of thinking; and when you tell somebody that your painting IS a "nude descending a staircase," but it LOOKS like "an explosion in a shingle factory," you're asking people to change their way of thinking pretty radically.
