Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain,” the factory-made urinal that according to the New York Times is “considered the cornerstone of conceptual art,” got hammered this week by a French performance artist.
This wasn’t his first go at it either.
The artist, Pierre Pinoncelli, 77, had urinated and taken a small hammer to the piece — the urinal — in 1993. Pinoncelli claims he was doing performance art, and that Duchamps himself would approve.
Interestingly, the assaulted pissoire is actually a replica, one of eight created by Duchamps in 1964 to recreate the original presented (upside down) in 1917 at the Society of Independent Artists in New York.
The Society rejected it as neither original nor art, though they did not piss in it, nor take a hammer to the porcelain masterpiece.
I’m not sure if Pinoncelli has hired a lawyer yet — they have lawyers in France, right — but if he has one, I’d suggest they use this piece by Duchamps, as evidence in his favor.
Inspired by: If a urinal is art, can hammering it be, too?