ART.ISt’s SHIT

Article by Lili Jones

Damien Hirst (Above) ‘A Thousand Years’ 1990 made from: Glass, steel, MDF, cow's head, flies, maggots, insect-o-cutor, sugar and water. Damien Hirst (Below) Holidays / No Feelings 1989. 

Images: Saatchi Gallery   

In 2016 the Tate Britain held an exhibition of ‘Conceptual Art in Britain.’ The exhibition focused upon the outpouring of conceptual art that seemed to dominate the 60s and 70s. 

In our current climate which focuses upon “instagrammable” beauty and the affected nature of society, I wanted to look back at a time when it was the impact behind a piece that held pride of place rather than its appearance. More recent figures of the movement include Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. While they are now both household names their art originally outraged. However, in this article I wanted to focus upon one of its founders and how his attitude of shifting art from beauty of the senses to splendour in thought continues to cause ripples and divide opinions within the art world to this day. In 1961, Piero Manzoni produced Merda d’artista: 90 cans of his own excrement which he called ‘art,’ valuing each tin as equal to its weight in gold. Since then, some have sold for up to £103,250, almost 70 times their original value. My question is how? How is this art and how are people willing to spend such vast sums on it? Simply put, what am I missing? 

Damien Hirst ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ 1991 made from: a Tiger shark, glass, steel and formaldehyde solution  

Image: Saatchi Gallery   

‘Conceptualism’ is the fancy name given to the art movement that really doesn’t seem to be art at all. If you’ve wandered around a gallery recently, you will already know what pieces I’m talking about: the ones that made you think “okay now they’ve gone too far, that is NOT art” or, “I could have done that.” Like you, I was once completely boggled as to how a can of an artist’s own shit was sitting in a gallery as a ‘masterpiece’ and thought the artworld had finally lost the plot. Confused and slightly disturbed, I began my fascination with the movement. Surely, I must be missing something: there must be more to the can than its ‘special’ contents for it to be sitting proudly among the works of Leonardo Da Vinci and Gerhard Richter.   

Tracey Emin ‘My Bed’ 1998

Image From: The Tate 

Art has always been like society’s child: loveable but eager to push the boundaries of its parent’s’ carefully laid out guidelines. In 1907, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was revolutionary in its brutish treatment of the female form. Instead of soft curves, he used harsh, almost hacked pieces of flesh that were pieced back together with equal amounts of familiarity of the female shape and an abstraction far from what had come before. Perhaps, Conceptualism follows the same reasoning, taking our assumptions of what something ought to be and reimagining them in a way that makes us stop and think. So perhaps, the only thing that has changed from Picasso to Manzoni, is the shift in medium from paint on a canvas to shit in a can.  

 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) 

The story behind Manzoni’s rather unusual pieces is that his own father called his art ‘shit’ and from that comment sprung the idea that he would create art that was literally what his father described: shit in a can. He looked to comment upon the pomposity of the artworld and the gullibility of art buyers who could be made to buy anything if sold the right story. However, this was not the only function of Manzoni’s artworks. Through them he also furthered his investigation into the reification of an artist's body, trying to: understand the relationship between an artist’s persona and the body that gives rise to it. This thought is seen most clearly in his piece ‘Artist’s Breath’ which consists of a deflated balloon.  

Piero Manzoni ‘Artist’s Breath’ (1960) 

Image from: The Tate 

If art is to be judged as a form of craft, often it is the skill of how a piece has been made and its presentation that allies it with the notions of art and beauty. It is the skill of the painter or sculptor and their prestige within the artworld, that we deem to give an artwork its value. With Conceptualism this is reversed. A painter already has his medium of the brush and paint to then apply to the object he wishes to capture, but a conceptual artist first conceives of the message or idea they want to present and then finds a means most appropriate to express this. It is not how or for whom the art is made that gives it its importance, but rather why it is being made in the first place and to what end. In short, the beauty of crafting the replication of an idea falls second to the actual form of the idea within the mind.  

Furthermore, art often boils down to two emotions: shock and awe. While we may have feelings of warmth and comfort looking at beautiful landscapes and pretty sculptures, I would argue the shock factor of Manzoni’s project more forcefully instils itself upon the mind of the viewer. One may walk around a gallery and look at all the beauty there is, but one is not going to forget the can of an artist’s own shit anytime soon! If an artist's project is not to record the world but to create a reaction from its perceivers Manzoni’s work must be credited as one of the highest forms of art with such intentions.  

Manzoni with his ‘artworks’ 

When considering this notion, perhaps we can now see how Manzoni’s work carries more value than it appears to at first. He wanted to rebel against his father and the art world, and that he most assuredly did. Even years on, his pieces continue to divide opinions and be talked about. If this is what we mean by art, maybe Manzoni’s work isn’t as far of a cry from our prized Monet’s and Da Vinci’s. They are all simply using their environments and tools to capture their own realities in different ways. So maybe I have to give the movement of Conceptualism more of a chance and understand that it is not the piece of art placed before me that I should look to, but realise that this simply instantiates what is actually valuable to these artists: the message and impact behind them.