Artist Accused of Vandalizing Urinal
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.
Just slightly chipped? I’ll give the French performance artist the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he was using some sort of ineffective artist’s hammer, or perhaps a croquet mallet. I’ve hit porcelain urinals with a hammer before, sometimes even in the course of a paying job, but when I do it they violently explode into a million pretty little pieces of jagged shrapnel.
I think I understand where this guy is coming from: while I can’t give you a definition of art, I know it when I see it and/or create it, and an exploding urinal is art of the highest order and ranks high among my personal artistic achievments. Bravo for the effort, sir, even if it didn’t come off so well.
