We were cycling around Tokyo during the hot, sunny days of late summer, when we spotted an unusual object in front of a cozy tavern tucked away in a quiet side street. Hear ye, hear ye, all ye faithful worshippers at the altar of St. Marcel — Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), that is, the patron saint of postmodernism, whose appropriated, plain, industrially produced metal bottle rack became one of the seminal conceptual artist’s “readymades” when he created it in 1914. In Tokyo, we found the real thing, the source material of what has become a revered relic in the pantheon of puzzling objets concocted by the high priest of Appropriation and Recontextualization. Alas, the humble rack we encountered was busy doing a not so aesthetically subversive job of, well, serving as an oddly shaped whatchamacallit on which wine bottles had been hung out to dry — and to provoke inquisitive glances from passersby. We poked around and found some messages in these bottles. See the links here to the left to find out what they said.