An unrepentant 77-year-old French artist named Pierre Pinoncelli was in custody yesterday after taking a hammer to Marcel Duchamp's celebrated porcelain urinal at an avant-garde art exhibition in Paris's Pompidou Centre.The 1917 work, a bog-standard white urinal mounted upside down, was "not irreparably damaged", said a spokesman for the museum, which is hosting a major exhibition of the Dada movement, a precursor of surrealism.
It is not the first time Mr Pinoncelli has attacked the piece, titled Fountain and valued at more than €3m (£2m). During a 1993 exhibition in Nîmes, he relieved himself in it and then belaboured it with another blunt instrument.
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Dada dada
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2 comments:
The deal is that it's NOT the 1917 work. That was lost long ago. Dumchamp made several 'replacement urinals' in 1964. It's one of those that was damaged. So don't worry. They've got spare urinals. That work was recently voted the most influential work of modern art, even before Picasso's 'Guernica' or Munch's 'Scream'. #1. A urinal. A urinal. THE #1 symbol of modern art. A urinal. (Thank GOD it can be repaired!)
Pretty funny. I suppose it is more influential in that it cracked open Dada, and left a route for Pop Art, found objects, etc. Influential, at least, if not all that great. I prefer the mustache on the Mona Lisa.
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