On Wednesday, Pierre Pinoncelli attacked a replica of Marcel Duchamp's famous sculpture Fountain on display at the Dada exhibition at the Pompidou Center in Paris. (Previous post about Fountain here.) Apparently, the artwork was only slightly chipped and Pinocelli was arrested. From the New York Times:
Mr. Pinoncelli, 77, who urinated into the same urinal and struck it with a hammer in a show in Nîmes in 1993, has a long record of organizing bizarre happenings. Police officials said he again called his action a work of art, a tribute to Duchamp and other Dada artists.
Indeed, "Fountain" itself was rejected for being neither original nor art when Duchamp offered it for the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York in 1917. That version of the urinal, displayed upside down and signed "R. Mutt," was subsequently lost. The Pompidou's "Fountain" is one of eight signed replicas made by Duchamp in 1964.
After the attack on Wednesday, Mr. Pinoncelli was held by the police overnight. He was released on Thursday and ordered to appear in court here on Jan. 24 to answer charges of damaging the property of others. As in 1993, he could face a prison term or a fine. (After the first urinal attack, he was jailed for a month and fined the equivalent of $37,500.)
Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)
UPDATE: BB pal Jim Leftwich reminds us that in 1995, Brian Eno collected some of his urine and used plastic tubing to splash it onto Fountain even though the work was displayed behind glass at the MoMA. Link
