Pensioner Attacks Famous Work Of Art

Instructions

Read the following article and do the activities below.

Pensioner attacks famous work of art

An unrepentant 77-year-old art activist has been arrested in Paris for taking a hammer to one of modern art’s most celebrated pieces. Pierre Pinoncelli smashed several holes in Marcel Duchamp's white porcelain urinal, titled Fountain. The US$3 million art piece was on display at an avant-garde art exhibition in the French capital. The opinionated pensioner has a history of sabotaging the altered toilet. In 1993 he relieved himself in it before trying to deface it and reduce it to smithereens. Pinoncelli stated that by urinating over the work of art, it had reverted to its former state of a toilet and was therefore no longer art. He described his assault as a “charitable act” rather than an act of vandalism. He said: “Its existence was broken.... Better to put an end to it with a few blows from a hammer.”

Museum staff said the 1917 work was “not irreparably damaged” and could be restored to its former glory. Fountain was recently voted the most influential modern art work of all time by 500 leading art experts, beating Picasso’s Guernica and Andy Warhol’s prints of Marilyn Monroe. Duchamp shocked the art world when he submitted the upside-down urinal at an exhibition of contemporary art in New York. He signed it ‘R. Mutt’ a pseudonym that was also a pun on the German word for poverty – armut. At the time, critics scorned the piece and rejected it as an example of bad taste. Regardless, Duchamp went on to become a leading figure in the modern art world and was a proponent of elevating everyday things into objects for admiration and contemplation.

A ART OPINIONS
Do you agree with these opinions on art? Leave a comment in the comments section.

a. Modern art is not real art.

b. An upside down toilet is not a work of art.

c. Art isn’t important.

d. Art is only for rich people.

e. Children should spend much more time at school painting.

f. Everyone is an artist.

g. You need to be crazy to become an artist.

h. Real art is paintings by Renoir and Picasso.

B WRITE TO PIERRE PINONCELLI
Write a letter to Pierre Pinoncelli. Tell him what you think of his attempts to destroy the work of art. Ask him questions about his actions. Post your letter in the comment section and see if you have similar/different thoughts and questions than your colleagues.

Activity adapted from www.breakingnewsenglish.com