As a fitting and timely post-scriptum to my previous post, this story came out in The Guardian last week, concerning a certain art gallery cleaner who thought a sculpture of a German artist Martin Kippenberger needed a bit of good old scrubbing:
“The work, called When It Starts Dripping From the Ceiling (Wenn's anfängt durch die Decke zu tropfen), comprised a rubber trough placed underneath a rickety wooden tower made from slats. Inside the trough, Kippenberger had spread a layer of paint representing dried rainwater. He thought it was art: the cleaner saw it as a challenge, and set about making the bucket look like new.” [http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/nov/03/overzealous-cleaner-ruins-artwork]
A very similar thing happened in 1986 to a ‘grease stain’ by Joseph Beuys, famous for his environmental pieces; to a plastic bag in 2004 at Tate Britain, a work by Gustav Metzger; to Damien Hirst’s beer bottles and coffee cups in 2001. In 1961 Piero Manzoni of the Conceptual Art movement, however, managed to flog his ‘art’ – tins containing the artist’s excrement – before an anxious cleaner could get too close. Incidentally, two of the tins were auctioned for €124,000 in 2007 and £97,250 in 2008 respectively. As to the contents of the tins, it seems they indeed contain crap – art as crap, crap as art, crap art: “Manzoni's girlfriend Nanda Vigo, who helped him produce the cans, claimed the contents really were faeces. Vigo's assertion is disputed by Manzoni's brother and sister, but some cans have leaked and confirmed they are indeed faeces — though whether human or animal has not been verified. An art dealer from the Gallery Blu in Milan claims to have detected a faecal odour emanating from a can.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist’s_Shit]
One can only imagine what Nanda's 'help' actually consisted of.
One can only imagine what Nanda's 'help' actually consisted of.
