[CPProt.net] FW: Duchamp's urinal artwork vandalized in Paris

[Museum Security and Cultural Property Protection (Ton Cremers)]

Duchamp's urinal artwork vandalized in Paris


Last Updated Thu, 05 Jan 2006 09:16:06 EST 

CBC Arts <http://www.cbc.ca/arts/credit.html> 

A 77-year-old man is being held by police for damaging Fountain, French
artist Marcel Duchamp's famed urinal artwork.

The unidentified man is accused of attacking the piece, which was on display
as part of a large Dada exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, police
said Thursday. They say he chipped away at the piece with a small hammer on
Wednesday.

According to police, the man had attacked Fountainonce before, when it was
displayed in the southern French city of Nimes in the early 1990s.

A representative of the Pompidou Centre said that the piece has been removed
and will be restored.

Fountain is one of Duchamp's most famous works, first unveiled at a New York
exhibit in 1917. The Dada pioneer took aim at the notion of "high art" and
culture by using everyday materials and found objects in his artwork in
order to question the nature of art.

In December 2004, a panel of 500 significant people in the British art scene
voted Fountain the most influential artwork of the 20th century. Duchamp,
who became a U.S. citizen in the 1950s, died in 1968.

 

 

David Kinahan

Campaign Writer & Researcher

Art Gallery of Ontario

317 Dundas Street West

Toronto, ON   M5T 1G4

416.979.6660 x775

david_kinahan at ago.net

Please join the AGO http://www.ago.net/ago/join/
<http://www.ago.net/ago/join/> 

 

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