Dadaism attacked!

[living_stradivarius]

Court upholds urinal attack conviction
Fri Feb 9, 2007 10:20am ET

PARIS (Reuters) - A self-proclaimed performance artist who attacked a urinal symbolic of the anarchic Dada movement with a hammer had his three-month suspended sentence upheld by a French court Friday.

Known as "Fountain" and first exhibited by surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp in 1917, the ceramic urinal was slightly cracked by Pierre Pinoncelli's attack in January 2006.

"It was a nod to Dadaism, I wanted to pay homage to the spirit of Dada," said Pinoncelli, 78, who complained about the "non-recognition of his artistic act."

Pinoncelli, who also attacked the urinal in 1993, was put on probation for two years and ordered to pay 14,352 euros ($18,640) to repair the work which was exhibited in Paris's Pompidou Center.

One of the central figures of the early 20th century Dadaist movement, Duchamp created eight versions of the urinal which was voted the most influential art work of the last century in one survey of art experts.


http://today.reuters.com/news/articlene ... ml&src=rss

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What an outrage!

[Gary]

Duchamp created eight versions of the urinal...

Seven more to go.

[jbuck919]

DuChamp's "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Even" was cracked by accident and never repaired because the crack just seemed in the spirit of the work. It seems to me this guy was on to something.

[Teresa B]

Duchamp created eight versions of the urinal...

Seven more to go.

I never could figure why Dadaism was considered significant. I suppose it was the usual "bucking against societal norms", or "here's a joke on the rest of you idiots" thing, but ignoramus that I am, I stubbornly refuse to get the joke.

Teresa

[Ralph]

There's a larger question of the role of the urinal in Western culture and its surprisingly infrequent appearance in art.

[jbuck919]

There's a larger question of the role of the urinal in Western culture and its surprisingly infrequent appearance in art.

Er, they didn't have urinals when there was art?

[Ralph]

There's a larger question of the role of the urinal in Western culture and its surprisingly infrequent appearance in art.

Er, they didn't have urinals when there was art?

*****

That depends on which school of art history one believes.

[Brendan]

The spirit of Lazlo Toth lives on!

[jbuck919]

The spirit of Lazlo Toth lives on!

For those who do not know, that is the person who smashed Michelangelo's Pieta with a sledge hammer. It was thankfully possible completely to repair and restore the statue. His real crime was to force the Vatican to put it behind a glass shield which hampers its full appreciation. When I was in Rome in 1975, after the Pieta incident, I was with my friends in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli observing Michelangelo's even greater "Moses." Though it was a jubilee year, we were the only ones in the church, and nothing would have prevented one of us from doing exactly the same thing that had been done to the Pieta. I could say exactly the same for Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. I don't know if these situations have been corrected in the interim, but great art in general is always in great danger.

[PJME]

Duchamp created eight versions of the urinal...

Seven more to go.

:lol:
I never could figure why Dadaism was considered significant. I suppose it was the usual "bucking against societal norms", or "here's a joke on the rest of you idiots" thing, but ignoramus that I am, I stubbornly refuse to get the joke.

Teresa

Hi, here are a few reasons why Dada can be taken seriously :
( this is just for information):

Contemporary art as we know it could not have come into existence without Dada. Virtually every artistic principle and device which underlies the literature, music, theater, and visual arts of our time was promoted, if not invented, by the Dadaists: the use of collage and assemblage; the application of aleatory techniques; the tapping of the artistic resources of the indigenous cultures of Africa, America, and Oceania; the extension of the notion of abstract art to literature and film; the breaking of the boundaries separating the different art forms from one another and from "everyday life"; the notion of art as performance; the expropriation of elements of popular culture; the notion of interaction or confrontation with the audience--everything which defines what we loosely call the "avant-garde." One would be hard pressed to name an artistic movement since 1923 which does not, at least in part, trace its roots to Dada: Surrealism, Constructivism, Lettrism, Fluxus, Pop- and Op-Art, Conceptual Art, Minimalism. But the effects of Dada are not limited to the world of the arts; its impact on contemporary life has been felt from the streets of Chicago to Madison Avenue. The style of political protest which came to the forefront in the late sixties--mock trials, Yippies, Guerrilla theater--can readily be traced back to the actions of the Dadaists in Zurich, Berlin, and Paris during and after the First World War. And commercial advertising as we know it today is indebted to the Dadaists' experiments with collage and typography; indeed, two members of the Berlin Dada group founded a "Dada Advertising Agency," and the Hanover Dadaist Kurt Schwitters designed newspaper and magazine advertisements which pioneered techniques which we now take for granted.

Read more at : http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/archive.html

[Opus132]

^ Seems to me the world would have been better off without all this da da nonsense...

[jbuck919]

Many art critics would say that the three most important visual artists of the 20th century were Picasso, Matisse, and Marcel DuChamp. I would like to state for the record that I am not against "modern" or "contemporary" art per se and that my earlier post was intended in part to bait (in a friendly kidding way) Ralph, who is known not to care for non-representational art. In very characteristic, perceptive, and admirable fashion, he did not take the bait.

[Teresa B]

Thanks, PJME, for the elucidation on the influence of Dada. I admit to relative ignorance of the connections and history, and I bow to your very good points.

However...
I still don't like Duchamp's "ready-made" nonsense, and think he can't hold a candle to Picasso and Matisse. Good grief, are cracked urinals, fur-lined teacups and Mona Lisas with moustaches really comparable to "Guernica"? I dunno, I guess I still don't get it.

Teresa

[Brendan]

I made that urinal to throw in their faces and now they discuss its aesthetic qualities.
- Marcel Duchamp

[burnitdown]

http://www.modestypanel.com/artorcrap/

[burnitdown]

http://www.modestypanel.com/artorcrap/

[Gary]

http://www.modestypanel.com/artorcrap/

Well, the plaster cast of the victim from Pompeii looked less like "crap" than a reluctant version of life imitating art.

Contemporary art as we know it could not have come into existence without Dada. Virtually every artistic principle and device which underlies the literature, music, theater, and visual arts of our time was promoted, if not invented, by the Dadaists...

While I do not doubt Dada's broad influence, I do wonder whether real art couldn't arise from real crap; the two need not be mutually exclusive. They are considering of making furniture from cow dung, you know. Article

[jbuck919]

While I do not doubt Dada's broad influence, I do wonder whether real art couldn't arise from real crap; the two need not be mutually exclusive.

One word for you: Verdi.

[PJME]

opus crap 1 / Picasso

[Gary]

Well, at least can't find that readymade.

[living_stradivarius]

For some reason, I find that the art the emerges from "crap" tends to elicit sexual thoughts...