Today’s Piece: Artist’s Shit 1961
Photograph by Fonda Portales. Piero Manzoni, Artist’s Shit, 1961, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid,
Spain
The Professor Says:
When I ask students for their definitions of Art, they answer with variations on this theme; art
communicates an artist’s emotional state that an audience member can reciprocate. They live within a cultural bias that argues art is expressive and stems from an artist’s need to be understood, witnessed, believed. Culturally, we define art as that which is made with intention, with skill, and with the purpose of reception. We believe that truly good artists want to and are capable of creating an emotional experience for us.
Throughout the 20th century, we have felt more comfortable leaving behind the aesthetics of Ruskin who argued that art should connect us spiritually with the Sublime—that which
is terrifying and awesome—and we have generally accepted that art can reflect more of the banal, the ordinary.
The more progressive and the more academically dissonant may even concede that anything intentioned can be art—an ashtray conceived by a designer, a bottlecap tree ornament crafted by family member—but, for the most part, we, and so my students, want to find feeling in
the visual arts.
And then I show them the following work by Piero Manzoni.
In the early 1960s, Manzoni created a series of 90 tins. He numbered and signed the individual cans on their lids. Each has a paper label with a repeating pattern of the artist’s name. The
labels are printed in English, French, Italian, and German and also clearly
describe the contents: Artist’s Shit, 30 Grams Net, Freshly Preserved, Produced
and Tinned, In May 1961. Yes, these 1.77” X 2.55” X 2.55” individual cans are
said to encase Manzoni’s desiccated feces.
When we are confronted with the work of an artist like Piero Manzoni, we may feel confused.
We may, walking through the gallery/ museum system, feel duped. We may even feel chagrined, angry. These are all feelings that can lead to dismissiveness. I certainly notice this in my students. But in dismissing works like Artist’s Shit, we inevitably dismiss something of ourselves as well.
First, let me give you a little background for Manzoni’s movement—Conceptualism. Conceptualists were jaded by the popularity and existential angst of the Abstract Expressionists (Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still). Primarily through the flat canvas, Abstract Expressionists sought a primordial spirituality for themselves, one that could be found in unconscious gestures and a lack of immediately recognizable forms (hence the drips). For a while, the Abstract Expressionists were considered, at least by the art critic Clement Greenberg, the only artists worth paying attention to. So the Conceptualists were subversives of their time. Conceptual artists (with a majuscule C) argues that art is not necessarily the finished product but rather the IDEA that puts the creation of a work into action. Conceptualists, like Pop artists, are also interested in redefining a traditional definition of Art and the role of the artist in creating art.
Granted, in response to many conceptualist pieces, especially as lay observers, we may be left with no emotional response, though perhaps a visceral one. We may feel left out of the process because we may not be aware of the creator’s intention; it is difficult for us to respond emotionally to the purely intellectual. And in Manzoni’s cans, there is little form to interact with. The subject of the conceptual piece, the shit, is entirely hidden from our view. In fact, the only aspect of the work we can react to is the IDEA of canning one’s own feces.
The intention of the collection lies in the artist’s audacity to confront us, and he leaves us only
the tangible tins as testimony of his engagement. The dialogue that we create in our own heads while we look at this innocuous collection of tins IS the art created. If we are willing, we must clarify for ourselves our own ideas about art and creativity.
The intention of the collection also lies in confronting us with what and where we are willing to talk about ourselves. Ideally, the museum, the gallery is to be a place of open engagement, a place of cultural dialectic, but it is more often a place of posing, a space of limiting conversation to that which is commercially viable, deemed historically relevant by the patriarchy. In a polite society, Manzoni reminds us of the limitations we submit to so that we do not have to admit that we all regularly, if we are healthy, shit.
Think about this, too. Manzoni was 27 when he completed this series; he would die just shy of his 30th year. At 27, Manzoni exhibited his own sense of fearlessness about his ideas. At such a young age, he defied thousands of years of traditional thinking about what art can be. Manzoni didn’t dismiss his own idea, and that
is what makes him remarkable in this work (though he is among many Conceptual artists who are also experimenting with different definitions of art, viable material, and the role of the artist). Someday, his subject matter is even going to be the idea behind a popular children’s book. Have you read Everybody Poops by Taro Gomi (translated into English by Amanda Mayer Stinchecum)?! If we allow our children to talk about what is natural, why would we stifle it in ourselves as adults?!
References
Howarth, Sophie. (November 2000). Piero
Manzoni, Artist’s Shit, 1961: Summary. Retrieved from http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/artists-shit-t07667/text-summary
Ruskin, John. (March 2010). The Mountain Glory. Modern Painters, IV, 350. Retrieved
from
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31623/31623-h/31623-h.htm#page344
The Bitch says:
Girl, that is a can of shit!
Look I am all for conversating about “What is art?”, but for really real, that is a can of literal shit. What in the hell was wrong with this man?!? You know why your students clam up? I am willing to bet that art students tend to be visual thinkers. They are probably forced to visualize a grown-ass man taking his own feces and putting in a can! You know where else you can see such Poo-casos? In mental hospitals!
I can’t even. I swear to god.
OK, look, I am a with it kind of guy. And I get it, the Conceptualists felt constrained by the standard of the Abstract Expressionists. You say the Conceptualists were subversives of their time. WRONG!
If Art History were a high school, these people are clearly that bunch of odd people eating lunch at their own table, and trying to convince themselves that people just don’t get them. You know, the Goth kids who somehow all seemed to rebel in exactly the same somewhat creepy way.
Once again, I wish to point out that the man CANNED HIS OWN FECAL MATTER. I mean how important is winning THAT kind of an argument to you, where your response to what you see going on in the Art World (not something that actually impacts the lives of most people in modern society, sorry about it) is to take your own shit and put it in a can with your name on it ?
I think this alleged piece says more about our willingness to exploit the mentally ill than it does about what we are willing to talk about. It seems like Manzoni was soooo damned invested in telling us the “Emperor has no clothes” that he is willing to be covered in schize to do it!
The problem is, only two people call out an emperor, the child and the fool. The child grows up, and the fool, well he remains a fool
