Sarah, do you know about this?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060106/lf ... 0106144405
Famous Duchamp artwork damaged by a man with a hammer
no, i didn't even know duchamp had done a urinal.
the only thing i know about marcel duchamp is nude descending a staircase, unless that's not marcel duchamp's -- i didn't even know there where a sculpture to be vandalized -- the last exhibit that i saw at the pompidou was so freaky i wanted to watch a disney movie to clear my brain. it was disturbing.
so is that though, i mean why is this guy attacking the public urinal?
the only thing i know about marcel duchamp is nude descending a staircase, unless that's not marcel duchamp's -- i didn't even know there where a sculpture to be vandalized -- the last exhibit that i saw at the pompidou was so freaky i wanted to watch a disney movie to clear my brain. it was disturbing.
so is that though, i mean why is this guy attacking the public urinal?
Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" is a urinal he picked up at a junk sale, signed as "R. MUTT" (painted on the side) and declared it was a work of art. It was a statement in the Dadaist trend of eschewing traditional art forms, going against the existing expectations based on the belief that artistic viewpoints had become too narrow and conformity was making art boring. So, it was kind of a joke, mocking traditional sculptors by taking a urinal and calling it a sculpture. The original "found art" piece.
One guy, some years ago, tried to use the urinal for its normal purpose. He said Duchamp would have approved. However, audience involvement and functional sculpture wasn't really something Duchamp was into, his urinal was for the statement not the demonstration. He might have thought it was funny anyway. The guy got arrested, though, because you're not allowed to go into an art museum and piss on things.
Likewise, the hammer man, who is like 71 years old or something, he said Duchamp would have enjoyed this Dadaist craziness of smashing the artwork. Once again, the police are not convinced.
I think actually that these "vandals" have a point. Duchamp's initial message was that you can really do anything in art, even something as wierd and senseless as picking up a urinal and declaring it a sculpture, immediately changing it into an object of respect and veneration even though it is a urinal and nothing has changed about it. Now that it's art, police will stop you from pissing on it. Now that it's art, you couldn't buy that urinal for a million dollars or more. To Duchamp, it was a big joke.
One guy, some years ago, tried to use the urinal for its normal purpose. He said Duchamp would have approved. However, audience involvement and functional sculpture wasn't really something Duchamp was into, his urinal was for the statement not the demonstration. He might have thought it was funny anyway. The guy got arrested, though, because you're not allowed to go into an art museum and piss on things.
Likewise, the hammer man, who is like 71 years old or something, he said Duchamp would have enjoyed this Dadaist craziness of smashing the artwork. Once again, the police are not convinced.
I think actually that these "vandals" have a point. Duchamp's initial message was that you can really do anything in art, even something as wierd and senseless as picking up a urinal and declaring it a sculpture, immediately changing it into an object of respect and veneration even though it is a urinal and nothing has changed about it. Now that it's art, police will stop you from pissing on it. Now that it's art, you couldn't buy that urinal for a million dollars or more. To Duchamp, it was a big joke.
"He said Duchamp would have approved"
perhaps, i wouldn't want to go speaking for duchamp though.
you can get away with a lot and go, oh, it's art. i saw this show where these guys threw tennis shoes up over things and called it art on a new canvas, the canvas being the skyline or whatever was behind the shoe in its new local. it was an interesting thing, reminded me of jean michel basquiat?sp? sort of. the shoes were cute. but it didn't move me or anything like basquiat's stuff does so?? but that's just a matter of taste. i'm sure to some bashing the urinal is a great and very artistic thing.
"Now that it's art, police will stop you from pissing on it. Now that it's art, you couldn't buy that urinal for a million dollars or more. To Duchamp, it was a big joke."
that is interesting making a joke instead of art.
certain things about the art world have always pissed me off a little i guess. for instance so much art is a direct slap in the face of "the system" or whatever and yet it ends up in "the system's" museums. i'm like that is the worst joke of all because it's on the artists.
once i wrote a poem about that very thing. it was about hc westermann -- it was a terrible poem; i could never get it right, but the point was that he created these peices that ended up in the museum in dc which is owned and paid for by the government -- just like the boats he was making that were representations of his being owned by the government when he was in the militarty -- it's like he was the goverment's slave only to get out and become forever entombed by the same government. what can you do? ya know.
perhaps, i wouldn't want to go speaking for duchamp though.
you can get away with a lot and go, oh, it's art. i saw this show where these guys threw tennis shoes up over things and called it art on a new canvas, the canvas being the skyline or whatever was behind the shoe in its new local. it was an interesting thing, reminded me of jean michel basquiat?sp? sort of. the shoes were cute. but it didn't move me or anything like basquiat's stuff does so?? but that's just a matter of taste. i'm sure to some bashing the urinal is a great and very artistic thing.
"Now that it's art, police will stop you from pissing on it. Now that it's art, you couldn't buy that urinal for a million dollars or more. To Duchamp, it was a big joke."
that is interesting making a joke instead of art.
certain things about the art world have always pissed me off a little i guess. for instance so much art is a direct slap in the face of "the system" or whatever and yet it ends up in "the system's" museums. i'm like that is the worst joke of all because it's on the artists.
once i wrote a poem about that very thing. it was about hc westermann -- it was a terrible poem; i could never get it right, but the point was that he created these peices that ended up in the museum in dc which is owned and paid for by the government -- just like the boats he was making that were representations of his being owned by the government when he was in the militarty -- it's like he was the goverment's slave only to get out and become forever entombed by the same government. what can you do? ya know.
Okay I found it, the post on the other board that got me:
I bear no responsibility for this, for I am playing the Stooges at full volume on a sunny day in Seattle. But still, here is what I found and I did not write:
I bear no responsibility for this, for I am playing the Stooges at full volume on a sunny day in Seattle. But still, here is what I found and I did not write:
Before the more publicised and better known attack on Duchamp's urinal by Chinese artists Yuan Cai and Jian Jun Xi ianjun, there was another by the 69 year old Frenchman Pierre Pinoncelli. During an exhibition at the Carré des Arts in Nimes, southern France Pinoncelli, a performance artist pissed in the fountain and then hit it with a hammer. He claimed that the pissing was "to restore to it its real value" and the hammer blow was to protest "the art market going to the dogs."
He was imprisoned two days later after being found guilty of willfully damaging a monument or an object of public utility 2. Five years later he was ordered by the court to pay 250,000 francs to an insurance company, 20,000 francs to the state (in the person of Culture Minister Catherine Trautmann), 16,336 francs for repairs and 10,000 francs in costs. Many viewed this amount to be quite excessive and a thinly veiled retaliation for his attack in 1969 on the then Cultural Minister André Malraux. During a Chagall exhibition opening in Nice, Pinoncelli, armed with a water pistol squirted the Cultural Minister with red paint.
Pinoncelli, whose other performances include setting fire to his own clothes during a street action, attempting to hold up a bank with a sawn off rifle loaded with blanks and being thrown into the port of Nice in a tied bag laden with weights in homage to Monte Cristo was later to come to international attention via one of his performances.
Conclusion: This dude rocks.
okay well i love chaggall if he'd shot the chaggall with the red paint i might have said screw him because chaggall is beautiful.
but it was just the cultural minister
"being thrown into the port of Nice in a tied bag laden with weights in homage to Monte Cristo was later to come to international attention via one of his performances"
puts new meaning to the phrase acting out.
thanks mark once again, very interesting i've never heard of this person, but you'd have to admit he's interesting.
but it was just the cultural minister
"being thrown into the port of Nice in a tied bag laden with weights in homage to Monte Cristo was later to come to international attention via one of his performances"
puts new meaning to the phrase acting out.
thanks mark once again, very interesting i've never heard of this person, but you'd have to admit he's interesting.