This is an absolutely textbook example of the old saying: "I don't have a dog in this fight." Seriously: either outcome to this situation leaves me with a "who gives a shit?" attitude.

But then I despise the French, so maybe that's coloring my thinking.

$3.6 million is the appraised price, but the Dadaist artwork is actually insured for 170,000 spools of baling twine.

Its like watching lesbian sex. Who ever comes out on top, you're satisified.

Here's a good website on Marcel Duchamp.

Again the unwashed conservatives critique of art is so lacking that it takes away from the message that we can be as smart as liberals. I have had enough. If Bill Buckley calls for me tell him I'll be at Barneys.

I thought "Cthulhu" was the Arab word for Satan?

Most compelling modern art posting ever!

It unleashes, shifts and plays with your emotions:

- Outrage
at at the depravity of modern
performance artists who would deatroy
a "valuable piece of art"
- Confusion
as to that art
- Enthusiasm
as to wanting to destroy the art
- Sense of conflict
as to what to do now
- Final apathy
as to what happens in the end.

You know what's funny though? He didn't destroy it, which means that someone intervened. But think back to that train in France where the people were robbed and raped. No one intervened. The people of France are willing to risk their safety for a toilet more than they are for their fellow man. Interesting.

To be fair, Dizave, it wasn't a toilet.

It was a urinal.

A homo urinal.

Also known as a "sandy b."

Maybe it was a bidet instead of a regular toilet?

if you think these guys have a wierd idea of "art" check out piero manzoni. he filled little canisters with his own shit, labeled them "merda d'artista" (artist's shit), and sold them for the same value as their weight in gold. he also sold baloons he had blown up and labeled "artist's breath"

I've actually got to agree with the guy, and applaud his chutzpah--one of the funniest things about postmodern art is the fact that, frankly, no matter how desperately the artist tries to make himself too hardcore and subversive to be shown in 'bourgeois' museums--it's not five minutes before some gallery owner whose walls the guy just spontaneously smeared with his own excrement is offering him 5,000 bucks to do a whole series--'And, you know, maybe add some vomit, yes?'.

I give it a week, tops, before some rich fool offers the French guy 100,000 euros to destroy his art collection in front of 200 applauding guests at a wine and cheese party.

LOL ramms, the first time I read that I saw "sold baboons he had blown up..."

Rememebr back when that nutcase who tried to wreck the statue of the virgin mary with christ in her arms

Spurwing, yes, that's why she's behind protective glass now (at St. Peter's).