re focus

["Bill Urmenyi" <bill@zzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Norman
Yes you are right.

There was also mention of Piero Manzoni's canned faeces. His work followed
on from the Dada movement of which Duchamp (of urinal fame) was a member.
Manzoni's work was basically the embodiment of ideas. So it was the idea
that was the important thing rather than the finished 3 dimensional work.
This is conceptual art. The view is that ideas have an aesthetic of their
own and should be thought of that way and that that is the important thing.
It is my view that his best piece was a 'plinth for the world' which was an
upside down plinth with text. When someone puts his faeces in a can and says
it is art, some people become outraged, however the idea was that artist's
faeces is worth more than anybody else's and in his case this is definitely
true. All he had to do was say it was art and because it was made by him it
was valuable. This now goes beyond a statement about faeces and becomes a
statement about how the finances of the art world function and have a good
laugh at the sa me time whilst getting paralytic drunk. So far, nobody has
actually opened a can to see if it really does contain faeces as that would
be a very expensive thing to do.

Bill Urmenyi