The old man and the urinal - Paris ponders a surreal question of the
value of art
Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Saturday December 23, 2006
The Guardian
What is the true value of a urinal? Is it worth more if it has been
attacked with a hammer and peed into in the name of art by an old man
who once chopped off part of his finger?
The surrealist conundrum would perhaps have delighted Marcel Duchamp,
the French Dadaist who caused outrage in 1917 when he signed a porcelain
urinal "R Mutt", christened it Fountain and declared it art. But for
Paris's law courts, it is proving more of a headache.
When the 77-year-old performance artist Pierre Pinoncelli arrived at a
Dada exhibition at the Pompidou Centre modern art museum in Paris last
January and took a hammer to Duchamp's seminal work, the French art
world was aghast but not surprised. The urinal, once voted the most
influential modern artwork ever, may be the cornerstone of conceptual
art, but Pinoncelli, who sees himself as a neo-Dada interventionist, had
long claimed its spirit of rebellion needed a boost. Over a decade
earlier, he had peed into it and chipped it with a hammer at an
exhibition in Nîmes. This time, he cracked it and scrawled the word
"Dada" in homage to his hero.
He was arrested and later given a three-month suspended sentence and
told to pay the Pompidou Centre €14,000 (£9,400) to repair the crack and
€200,000 in damages for loss of value of the work. But far from
protecting France from the ravages of a surrealist saboteur, the court
ruling has sparked a philosophical debate on the value of lavatories.
Pinoncelli has appealed, bemoaning the huge sum that the Pompidou has
requested. He claims his intervention has actually increased the value
of the work as Fountain was an "idea" more than a piece. The Pompidou
Centre says the urinal, one of eight commissioned by Duchamp after the
original was lost, has decreased in value on the international art
market. Another of the set sold for $1.9m (almost £1m) in 1999.
The court of appeal, which has already debated the market price of
urinals and pondered the fundamentals of the 20th century avant-garde,
has retired to weigh up "the very, very serious" question. It will rule
next month.
Writers and academics, meanwhile, have taken to publishing passionate
arguments in the newspaper Libération on the pros and cons of adding a
personal touch to conceptual artworks. At one stage, the director of the
Pompidou Centre wrote to the paper asking it to stop taking the piss.
The writer Dominique Noguez said in Libération this week: "It's the
Pompidou Centre who should pay Pinoncelli a substantial sum for his
material and immaterial contribution to Duchamp's work."
Alfred Pacquement, the Pompidou art museum's director, told the
Guardian: "Pinoncelli carried out an act of destruction on one of our
works. The piece needs to be restored a second time and is now so
fragile we're no longer able to lend it to exhibitions, which is
something we take very seriously."
Pinoncelli is unrepentant. His 40 years of "art happenings" include
holding up a bank in Nice with a fake gun to steal 10 francs (about £1),
and slicing off his fingertip at a Colombian art festival in protest at
leftwing guerrillas holding a Franco-Colombian hostage.
In the meantime, you should know that what you are reading is not a
newspaper article. Pinoncelli considers his press cuttings a form of
neo-Dada art intervention and lists them in his catalogue as part of his
surrealist crusade.
cont'd....
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1977957,00.html