USAToday reports that a 76 year old peformance artist tried to vandalise Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” with a hammer. The piece, a white urinal, was on display at the Pompidou Centre in Paris as part of a Dada retrospective.

Police did not name the suspect, and the exhibit, regarded as one of the most influential pieces of 20th century modern art, was taken away for repair.

This is not the first time that “Fountain” has been abused, so-called performance artists Yuan Cai and Jian Jun Xi urinated in the piece whilst being it was being exhibited at the Tate Modern – the same two clowns who wrecked Tracey Emin’s “My Bed”, also at the Tate.

The full story is here

This entry was posted on Friday, January 6th, 2006 at 7:19 pm and is filed under ArtWatch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.