A project for the ages:
In May 1961, Italian artist Piero Manzoni exhibited ninety cans of his poop in an art gallery in Albisola, Italy. This wasn't shit, it was art. Each can comprising Merda d'Artista ("Artist's Shit") was signed, numbered, and wrapped in a label like a can of tuna. On the label, printed in four languages, was: "Artist's Shit / Contents 30 grams net / Freshly preserved / Produced and tinned / in May 1961." Each can was on sale during its exhibition, priced by weight based on the current price of gold. From that base price (around $1.12 a gram in 1960) the value shot up; forty-one years later, the Tate Modern in London paid $34,100 to acquire Merda can #004. For what may be poop's first explicit manifestation in the history of art, this worked out to around $1,137 a gram -- an appreciation rate well above inflation.
[Quotes, as usual, are from Dave Praeger's Poop Culture. This is the 7th post in the Poop Mondays series.]
This was the same artist who did socle du monde ("base of the world") in which he turned a pedestal upside down and presented it as bearing the weight of the world. Sadly, he died at the age of 29, only two years after the poop project.
Why it feels strange to call this "art":
Mera pits the productions society values most -- art -- against those it values least. An artist's product, society teaches us, represents truth, beauty, and technical mastery. Art is the artist's contribution to humanity's soul. Poop, on the other hand, is the one thing we're all capable of creating with equal skill; neither Duchamp nor Manzoni have any more aesthetic control over the sphincter than you or I. To claim his poop was unique simply because he was an artist was an a fortiori argument that pushed conceptual art to its absurd extreme.
An unfortunate but hilarious side-effect of this particular project:
Forty-five of the original ninety tins have reportedly exploded, spraying artist's shit (and the bacteria and gases that had been fermenting in it) all over the collectors' galleries.
Other than exploding tins, I love the idea of this project. It is fascinating (to me) to think about the different market values of poop depending on context. The same person who paid thousands of dollars for Manzoni's poop would probably pay hundreds of dollars to avoid the experience of seeing, smelling, or God-forbid stepping in a stranger's poop.
Here is a fascinating question: What person, in what context, would have the highest-valued poop?
I'd bet that a Buzz Aldrin turd released in space would demand a pretty penny. Not sure if it would go higher than a Marilyn Monroe turd.
You heard it here first: If I ever become famous enough to have poop with a positive market value (come to think of it, that is a good measure of fame, isn't it?), I will sell it. In fact, I wouldn't mind being remembered as the guy who sold more of his poop than any other human in history. I am only half-joking.
This last quote is unrelated to the ninety can project, but it is my favorite quote from the Poop In Art chapter. Can you guess the famous artist who said it?
The excrementitious palette enjoys infinite variety, from gray to green and from ochers to browns.
Twas the mustachioed man, Salvador Dali.
