Why was The Large Glass unlike most modern paintings of its time?

The Large Glass (also known as The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even) was distinct from most modern paintings of its time because Marcel Duchamp explicitly rejected what he termed "retinal art"—art intended primarily to please the eye.1

Instead of traditional painting techniques, Duchamp adopted the geometrical methods of industrial design. He approached the work more like a blueprint for a symbolic machine, using it to embody his complex ideas regarding man, woman, and love. By moving away from the aesthetic focus common to his contemporaries, including the Cubists, Duchamp utilized the work to express an aggressive intellectualism that stood in opposition to the conventional art world of the era.12