Duchamp's "Idiot Detector" err make that "Fountain" attacked with hammer

[DS1]

So close, yet so far :cry:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060106/ap_on_en_ot/france_duchamp_urinal;_ylt=AttKDlR_yZ5juzh.NXCd9hOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3NW1oMDRpBHNlYwM3NTc-


PARIS - A 76-year-old performance artist was arrested after attacking Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" — a porcelain urinal — with a hammer, police said.

Duchamp's 1917 piece — an ordinary white, porcelain urinal that's been called one of the most influential works of modern art — was slightly chipped in the attack at the Pompidou Center in Paris, the museum said Thursday. It was removed from the exhibit for repair.

The suspect, a Provence resident whose identity was not released, already vandalized the work in 1993 — urinating into the piece when it was on display in Nimes, in southern France, police said.

During questioning, the man claimed his hammer attack on Wednesday was a work of performance art that might have pleased Dada artists. The early 20th-century avant-garde movement was the focus of the exhibit that ends Monday, police said.

[Hissyspit]

1. It's not the "original" 1917 work. That one no longer exists.

Duchamp "signed" several reproductions for museums in the 1960s, I believe.

One could argue that Duchamp would appreciate another artist urinating on his work, but, on the other hand, the fact that the man seems to see the work only as a urinal indicates that he doesn't GET it.

[DS1]

2. I get it.

I still wish it would go away.

[anarch]

5. sure, he "gets it"

he just seems to see the act of urinating as a work of art in itself. Sounds like bull-dada to me.

[Shakespeare]

3. I LOVE the guy's explanation for the attack.

Nice. :rofl:

[asthmaticeog]

4. He's absolutely right, of course.

I like Duchamp's redaymades, but this I like a lot, too.

[UncleSepp]

6. The world now is as absurd as it was then

and yet we do not have our own Dada. Dada has become impossible! Every absurdity of art is eaten by the art world just as every absurdity in politics is swallowed by the masses. Now, it seems that anything which is called art is taken as art. The more useless, the harder to appreciate and comprehend, the more outrageous, the better now - art is now meaningless. Once, art was a pleasing simulation of life as it didn't exist, a painted bowl of fruit offered to the starving. It was pictures of sweet girls in gardens in a time of war and chaos, all aesthetics and no soul, disconnected from the world. Now, it seems to be egotism offered to the low, taunting them, daring them to expose themselves to insult by saying "I'd rather see a bowl of fruit than half a cow in formaldehyde". It is dictatorial now - art is art, because it has been called art. Accept it! It is art because it is to be seen as art! It is a mirror of fascist authority.

It's time to break the mirror. The reason for existence of Fountain has been undone, and the radical act now is exactly to piss in it - to say "No, it's not art, it's a urinal." That act cries out for people to look and see what is plainly in front of them, and to engage in realities, not symbols and concepts. That act is exactly the kind of act we need in political life, to cry to people to look to what is happening in the world, and to see it for what it is. Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. Don't murder people and call it justice. And don't hang a pisser on the wall and tell me it's art.


BTW I am a huge fan of Dada and adore the absurd. The fur teacup still makes me smile.