https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Readymades_of_Marcel_Duchamp&oldid=1316861612
readymades 
Clement Greenberg described the project of Modernism as an inward turn, a move toward self- consciousness. He said: "Modernism provides a critical commentary constantly adapting to kitsch pseudo-culture."
We can understand the history of American art as a polemic against the Cathedral, against the narrative inherited from our European parents. But their only symptom of error is a record at self repair. Ad Reinhardt may fly in the face of monkey see monkey do pedagogy, but Banksy is trying to teach us something too.
These slides compiled across cultures and historical eras draw out a history of ideas without recourse to narrative progress. You would think it archaic to draw a self-portrait each day, on the same piece of paper, erasing the previous drawing before each class.
The mass formalization of the past is a more perfect union between contemporary art and the notion that our time in graduate school earns rewards in the afterlife. This largely is largely supplanted by the importance of shared narratives and goals in the emergence of collective behavior, to say nothing of how producers in uncertain economies make creative decisions.