A famous piece of Dada art was attacked for a second time and by the same person in an art museum in France in January 2006. The artwork is entitled Fountainonce and is a famous Marcel Duchamp "ready made", a term which Duchamp coined that refers to ordinary objects that he would assemble, often with humorous or surprising results. Fountainonce is really a porcelain urinal which Duchamp signed "R. Mutt 1917" in a shaky hand.
So what would lead one elderly French man (he is 77) to attack the same piece of artwork twice? Well it turns out this piece of art has a history of attacks. In 2000, two Chinese performance artists attempted to urinate into the piece when it was on display at the Tate Modern. Previously in 1993, Pierre Pinoncelli, the same man responsible for the recent attack, urinated into the artwork as it was on display at a museum in Nimes, France. Pinoncelli claims to be a performance artist and that Duchamp would have approved of his act of art vandalism.
I think Duchamp would have liked the publicity created by the hammering of Fountainonce. And perhaps he would not have minded the destructive nature of the hammering; after all the artwork is merely a vintage French urinal and there are several of them at museums worldwide. But the reality is that each piece is worth a few million dollars and each piece is regarded as a significant work of art. It is also interesting to note that Dada as an art movement encouraged spontaneity, surprise, and even subterfuge, but not necessarily violence or destruction.
In a world that seems to claim anything can be art, I would like to state that true art is not based on violence or destruction, it is about communication and re-presenting the artists' world view in a meaningful and transcendent way, no hammers allowed. What do you think?
