Before the more publicised and better known attack on Duchamp's urinal by Chinese artists Yuan Cai and Jian Jun Xi ianjun, there was another by the 69 year old Frenchman Pierre Pinoncelli. During an exhibition at the Carré des Arts in Nimes, southern France Pinoncelli, a performance artist pissed in the fountain and then hit it with a hammer. He claimed that the pissing was "to restore to it its real value" and the hammer blow was to protest "the art market going to the dogs."[1]

He was imprisoned two days later after being found guilty of willfully damaging a monument or an object of public utility[2] Five years later he was ordered by the court to pay 250,000 francs to an insurance company, 20,000 francs to the state (in the person of Culture Minister Catherine Trautmann), 16,336 francs for repairs and 10,000 francs in costs. Many viewed this amount to be quite excessive and a thinly veiled retaliation for his attack in 1969 on the then Cultural Minister André Malraux. During a Chagall exhibition opening in Nice, Pinoncelli, armed with a water pistol squirted the Cultural Minister with red paint.

Pinoncelli, whose other performances include setting fire to his own clothes during a street action, attempting to hold up a bank with a sawn off rifle loaded with blanks and being thrown into the port of Nice in a tied bag laden with weights in homage to Monte Cristo was later to come to international attention via one of his performances.

At an arts festival in the Colombian town of Cali, Pinoncelli lopped off his little finger. The action was a show of solidarity with the kidnapped Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. Pinoncelli then wielded his damaged hand like a paint brush splattering blood across a poster with the letters FARC (The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia who kidnapped Betancourt - an outspoken critic of the group).

Pinoncelli told the press that "The idea was to share in Colombia's violence. Ingrid Betancourt symbolises the courage of all those fighting against corruption, and that is why I am rendering her homage"[3]

 

1. French artist fined for damaging urinal
Conservative Arts, Agence France-Presse; Friday November 20,1998

2.Urban & Adventurous Artists Part 1
Petr Kazil; 1999 - 2001

3.Artist severs finger in kidnap protest
BBC News; 11 June, 2002

 

Pierre Pinoncelli
Official type homepage for Pinoncelli (in French).