The Fountain of Couth

The 'Fountain' attack: Art or crime?

While I've had my share of Angelina and Oprah news this week, one story that I can't seem to get enough of involves a 77-year-old man, a urinal and artist Marcel Duchamp.

Earlier this month, Pierre Pinoncelli, 77, was arrested after attacking Duchamp's Fountain at Paris' Pompidou Center. Created in 1917, Fountain is considered one of the most influential works of modern art of all time. As you can see on the left, it's also a porcelain urinal.

On Tuesday Pinoncelli was ordered to pay a fine and given a three-month suspended sentence for striking the urinal with a hammer. (Weirdly, this was the second time he attacked the urinal. In 1993 he, uh, urinated on it.) The case has revived that age-old question, "What is art?" -- especially since Pinoncelli's defense for his actions was that he was making an artistic statement. This week NPR interviewed an expert on Duchamp who maintained it was an act of vandalism; this commentary, however, suggests it "is exactly what Duchamp would have wanted."

Personally, this story sparked me to learn a little more about Duchamp. If you'd to do the same, this timeline is a good place to start and adds that he submitted Fountain under a pseudonym, "R. Mutt." The Met's website provides a good biography, while MarcelDuchamp.net offers some video interviews, shot several years before his death in 1968.

How do I feel about the Fountain case? I have to say Pinoncelli got what he deserved. The next time he feels the need to express himself, I can only hope he makes a urinal of his own at home -- and, if he decides to pee on it, decides to keep it there.

Posted at 09:52 AM/ET, 01/27/2006 in Random amusement, by Whitney Matheson, USA Today's Pop Candy blog

My comment:

While I agree that the work has been made into a mockery of itself by being touted as a great work, Mr. Pinoncelli's act was uncreative and hardly as inspired as his defenders make him out to be. Even if Mr. Pinoncelli had in mind all these great notions of anti-art and bringing the Dada piece back to it's original perception, the way he went about it seems just so pedestrian. If he had taken a crap in it, he would have been in Jackass 2. 'Nuff said. I think the key here is the notion that he was trying to destroy the work to make a point. There are many levels of destruction, and the level Mr. Pinoncelli has reached with his hammer and his pee is not the same level as what the Dadas were trying to do.

Appreciate the gesture, but the effort has to go much deeper than that.

Posted by: Buddhakowski | Jan 27, 2006 1:35:38 PM