Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Oh Crap, It's Not Crap!


What would you pay for a 30-ounce tin of crap? We're talking crap, poop. How about 124 thousand Euros? From the Times:

"When the Italian artist Piero Manzoni put his excrement into tin cans in the early 1960s and offered it as art, he said that he was exposing “the gullibility of the art-buying public”.

"Collectors and galleries that paid high prices for the tins — including the Tate — appeared even more gullible yesterday when it emerged that they contained not faeces, but plaster.

"The tin at the Tate, for which the gallery paid £22,300 in 2000, is labelled Merda d’Artis-ta (Artist’s S***) 1961. Described by the Tate as a seminal work, it was No 4 of 90 cans made by Manzoni, each supposedly containing 30 grams of his excrement. A buyer paid €124,000 (£84,000) at an auction in Milan last month for tin No 18."


No comments: