Wednesday 4 February 2009

Piero Manzoni

"Artist's shit" (Italian: "Merda d'artista") is a work of art by the Italian artist Piero Manzoni that was influenced by Marcel Duchamp's "Readymades".

In May 1961, Manzoni collected his own feces in 90 numbered cans, which contain 30 grams of feces each. He labelled them as "100% pure artist's shit" in Italian, English, French and German, and sold them for the price of their weight in gold. On May 23, 2007, an exemplar was sold for EUR124,000 at Sotheby's[1], and in October 2008, tin 083 was offered for sale at Sotheby's with an estimate of GBP50-70,000.[2].

Like Duchamp's "Readymades", "Artist's shit" questions the meaning of art as both cultural and consumer objects by inviting the viewer to confront a system that venerates cans of feces as works of art.[3]

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