Piero Manzoni (1933-63) - Merda d'artista (Artist's Shit), 1961

"Piero Manzoni was an Italian artist who died at the age of 29 in 1963. But before he went he got some excrement - his own - and put it in a tin can. 'Excellent!' he said, in Italian, 'I think I'll call it Merda d'artista!'

Manzoni's canned shit is well known now, or the idea of it is. It's an idea as powerful in the popular imagination as the idea of blank canvases. In fact the actual cans are not all that well known. There are many of them. Each one contains an amount of the artist's own shit. On the label it says 30 grams but of course no one can really tell. The labels are quite detailed and well designed, with the name of the work in three languages, plus the date, the artist's signature and the name of the collector who owns the individual can - all this is part of the look. PIERO MANZONI is printed on the label in light grey letters on a grey ground, with the name repeating so it makes a mantra of the artist's name, as well as a grey and yellow pattern.

When they were first sold they cost their weight in gold. Now they're worth much more. If one came on the market today it would cost about 30,000 pounds. So while a pile of them was shown in a vitrine in London's Serpentine Gallery recently, it was a pile of shit but it was nearly a million pound's worth. . .

Money, shit, art: the holy trinity. Manzoni took jokes to a higher plane than Duchamp, in that he elevated them to the spiritual plane which was somewhere Duchamp never really wanted to go. Manzoni transubstantiated the things of the earth into mystery things. His signature was his magic medium. With it he could turn balloons filled with his breath into saintly relics or make women into artworks. He signed them and issued them with a certificate so that they knew what class of living art work they were - temporary, permanent, intermittent and so on. Each state was symbolised by stamp of a different colour on the certificate - for example, a state of permanent art was symbolised by a red stamp. The women had no special duties as works of art but they did become prisoners of Manzoni, prisoners of his idea.

He wanted to make the world into a prisoner too, with a metal cube inscribed with the words 'Base of the world', which he exhibited upside down on the floor, making the earth into a sculpture, one that floated in infinite space."

http://voltaires-monkey.b...s-you.html

I love art. LOVE IT.

I bet they are a bit lighter now than when originally canned.

ZombieKitten said:

but it was preserved!

evenstar3 said:

nobody will ever open one to find out will they, it would devalue it totally!

ZombieKitten said:

exactly! i suppose you could x-ray one or something, but that kinda defeats the point.

I wonder if Ritz crackers come with that

although a pickle would be nice too

Brownsugar said:

or pumpernickel!

Do they come with an expiration date?

ArielB said:

yeah, when are they best before!

man, whats with the thread jackers tonight?


anywho,

silly artists

What next.....torture and kill animals ...and then shit in a can

Ocean said:

it's art though, that's the beauty of it.

evenstar3 said:

Shit in a can they can call what ever they like...but the torture of animals being called art .....if thats the case fu*k art!

Ocean said:

that's a whole different thread.

evenstar3 said:

I know ...sorry

The 2 girls 1 cup girls will probably be inspired by this

Ocean said:

no! i started this one because of people talking about 'shit on canvases not being art' in the other thread

Ocean said:

THIS is art! you just reminded me

http://www.youtube.com/wa...TbX1aMajow

evenstar3 said:

Laurel!!!! you have to find out the guy's name for me, the one that uses paint enemas to "shit" onto a canvas (a kind of splattery effect )

ZombieKitten said:

evenstar3 said:

oh opps

Ocean said:

the narrator sounds like sean micallef!

People go koo-koo for caca stuff!

you can buy mine from e-bay, it comes with a free roll of mentos.