“You are so ugly that you can be a modern art masterpiece”, in this way Sgt. Hartman insulted his soldier in the Kubrick cinematographic masterpiece ‘Full Metal Jacket’. What to say about it thinking at the Shit of Artist made by Manzoni? What do you think?
I love Art and I always take the chance to visit exhibitions and museums. In Milan, the Museum of 900 has many amazing pieces of art hosted into the old Arengario Palace, completely renewed and just in front of the Duomo Cathedral.
Amongst the many pieces of art made by artists of national and international relevance you can also find the popular Shit of Artist.
You will see it packed, labeled with written the weight of grams 30 and the date of production that was May 1961. No one really knows if inside the box there are or not the artist’s excrements, the mystery had not yet been solved but one thing is sure, the value of this ‘human attribute’ of artist is much higher than not the price of gold per gram. During 2016 one of the ninety boxes reached the quotation of 220’000 Euros. Much more than any artist’s expectation that evaluated his own product, modestly, at the price of gold.
Art or rubbish? This is the big question. For sure, Manzoni followed the artistic trend started by Duchamp with his piece of art called “Fountain” that was made with a simple urinal. Which is the irreverent concept behind the Manzoni ‘pieces of art’? One of the reasons behind was to prove that any kind of object, even if horrifying, made by a popular artist could have become an art masterpiece just because not of the object in itself but because of the popularity of the artist. Manzoni was thinking that this was ‘shit’ and he had to prove it. Probably a harsh critic to the system behind the drawing rooms of modern art. What could we say? He perfectly proved his theories.
Who knows what the big artists of the past would have thought about this ‘modern’ art, and you? What do you think about it?
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