There is a pink plasticine laboratory-made vagina hanging in Britain’s oldest commercial gallery, while that canteen of cutlery actually contains goat spines. And don’t touch the staple on the wall: it’s made from platinum.  The Fine Art Society – established in 1876 – will on Friday open a show paying tribute to one of the most influential artists of all time, Marcel Duchamp.  The exhibition features 50 artists showing works under the title What Marcel Duchamp Taught Me. Kate Bryan, the society’s director of contemporary art, said art historians and critics always talked about the legacy of Duchamp, but far less was heard from artists.  “To be honest, the more you study Duchamp, the less you know – he was so full of contradictions – so I thought the best thing to do was ask the artists.”  Duchamp is the father of conceptual art and best known for his readymades, as in the urinal he designated as art in 1917. His first pure readymade was a galvanised bottle rack from 100 years ago.  The artists helping to celebrate this centenary include Peter Blake, Keith Tyson, Gavin Turk and Cornelia Parker, who is taking the opportunity to vent her feelings about an incident in 2003 when Stuckists cut the string she had tied around Rodin’s The Kiss at Tate Britain for a piece called The Distance: A Kiss With Added String.  Parker managed to find the string and has tied it into a ball around a concealed weapon.  “She won’t say what it is,” said Bryan. “But it is really, really heavy.”  Henry Hudson has made a painted work with melted plasticine depicting one of four vaginas that have, apparently, been grown in a laboratory over the last year and been successfully implanted. The piece is called Desire, Arousal, Lubrication, Orgasm, Satisfaction.  There are other obviously Duchampian exhibits including a crumpled sheet of paper by Martin Creed and a black bin bag filled with air by Ceal Floyer. Susan Collis has put some nails, staple and tacks in the wall – much closer inspection reveals they are made from silver, gold, platinum and semi-precious stones.  Other artists include Angela Palmer, who has made what looks like a canteen of cutlery but in fact contains silver-plated goat spines; and the American surrealist Nancy Fouts, who has created what appear to be pretty 19th century paintings but are parodies of them.  It is a big show for the society, taking up for the first time all five floors of its Mayfair townhouse.  Bryan said all the artists she approached had said yes, they all felt they owed such a debt to him.  “There is enormous complexity to what Duchamp did. If you wanted to boil him down, it would be that there should be freedom … he thinks the power and the importance lies with the artist, he thinks art can be good, bad and indifferent, but it is still art. He changed the boundaries and made the playing field so much wider.”  What Marcel Duchamp Taught Me is at the Fine Art Society, New Bond Street, London, until 5 November
Fifty artists including Peter Blake and Cornelia Parker take part to show how the master of readymades influenced them