Artist's shit
Encyclopedia
Artist's Shit is a 1961 artwork by the Italian
artist
Piero Manzoni
. The work consists of 90 tin cans, each 30 grams and measuring 4.8x6.5cm, with a label in Italian, English, French, and German stating:
At the time the piece was created Manzoni was producing works that explored the relationship between art production and human production, Artist's Breath ("Fiato d'artista"), a series of balloons filled with Manzoni's breath, being an example.
A tin was sold for €
124,000 at Sotheby's
on May 23 2007; in October 2008 tin 083 was offered for sale at Sotheby's with an estimate of £50-70,000. It sold for £97,250. The cans were originally to be valued according to their equivalent weight in gold — $37 each in 1961 — with the price fluctuating according to the market.
One of Manzoni's collaborators, Agostino Bonalumi, claimed that the tins are full not of faeces but plaster; in contrast Manzoni's girlfriend Nanda Vigo, who helped him produce the cans, claimed the contents really were faeces. Vigo's assertion is disputed by Manzoni's brother and sister, but some cans have leaked and confirmed they are indeed faeces — though whether human or animal has not been verified. An art dealer from the Gallery Blu in Milan claims to have detected a fecal odour emanating from a can.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
Piero Manzoni
Piero Manzoni
Piero Manzoni was an Italian artist best known for his ironic conceptual art. Influenced by the work of Yves Klein, his own work anticipated, and directly influenced, the work of a generation of younger Italian artists brought together by the critic Germano Celant in the first Arte Povera...
. The work consists of 90 tin cans, each 30 grams and measuring 4.8x6.5cm, with a label in Italian, English, French, and German stating:
Artist's Shit
Contents 30 gr net
Freshly preserved
Produced and tinned
in May 1961
At the time the piece was created Manzoni was producing works that explored the relationship between art production and human production, Artist's Breath ("Fiato d'artista"), a series of balloons filled with Manzoni's breath, being an example.
A tin was sold for €
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
124,000 at Sotheby's
Sotheby's
Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...
on May 23 2007; in October 2008 tin 083 was offered for sale at Sotheby's with an estimate of £50-70,000. It sold for £97,250. The cans were originally to be valued according to their equivalent weight in gold — $37 each in 1961 — with the price fluctuating according to the market.
One of Manzoni's collaborators, Agostino Bonalumi, claimed that the tins are full not of faeces but plaster; in contrast Manzoni's girlfriend Nanda Vigo, who helped him produce the cans, claimed the contents really were faeces. Vigo's assertion is disputed by Manzoni's brother and sister, but some cans have leaked and confirmed they are indeed faeces — though whether human or animal has not been verified. An art dealer from the Gallery Blu in Milan claims to have detected a fecal odour emanating from a can.