A little over sixty years ago, in 1961, the Italian conceptual artist Piero Manzoni shook the international art market with an unusual work, although perhaps this is not the most appropriate term given its nature or the impact it caused. Perhaps it was closer to grotesque or scatological, in the less noble sense of the word.
The daring Manzoni came up with the idea of ??filling ninety cylindrical metal cans, like the tuna cans sold in any supermarket, each of which contained exactly 30 grams of excrement, which was supposed to be his, the artist’s. Of course, all duly labeled, numbered and signed.
When the tins were exhibited for the first time in an Italian art gallery, the price of each unit was established to correspond to the value of gold on the financial markets in 1961. Needless to say, since then its value has only increased. grow like foam
Years later -Manzoni died in 1963, only two years after putting his feces on sale-, a close friend of his revealed that the content of the already famous cans was nothing but plaster. But to this day it is still not known if the artist or his friend was lying. And for good reason: none of its buyers have dared to open theirs, lest an unexpected revelation suddenly reduce its value to zero, since it already goes for a million euros in a can, that is, about ninety million euros in total. There is nothing.
Last Christmas, for those who, due to these payments, found it difficult to find the ideal gift for their loved ones, once a can of excrement from whoever it was had been discarded, an Andorran company offered them the opportunity to give them clean bottled air as a gift. But not just any clean air, but pure air from the Pyrenees, specifically from the peaks of Ordino, Andorra. For the modest price of one hundred euros, one could give his partner or brother-in-law a bottle that contained, according to the advertising promotion, three hundred puffs of said pristine air.
An ideal gift, of course, although nothing original. The business of selling air -or smoke- had already made its way in many other parts of the planet, including in China. However, as reported in this newspaper by Àlex Tort (El patio digital, 01.13.2023), one of the points of sale for this product is an Andorran gas station. Is it a pious paradox? Who can guarantee the purity of the bottled air?
On the eve of Christmas 1919, when Duchamp was spending with his family in Rouen, the artist was pondering what he could give some wealthy American friends who had everything, Walter and Louise Arensberg, when suddenly in a pharmacy he came across the what i was looking for
Calvin Tomkins tells it in his biography of the artist (Duchamp, Anagrama, 1999): “In those days, syrups and serums used to be sold packaged in sealed glass vials, with necks with graceful curves. Duchamp asked the pharmacist to break the seal on a fairly large bell-shaped ampule (14.5 cm high), let the liquid drain and seal it again. Et voilà!… the ideal gift for his friends who had everything. He named it Air de Paris, despite being the air of Le Harve, the port where he hoped to board a steamer bound for New York.
Artist’s shit or plaster? Mountain air or gas station air? Paris air or Le Harve? What does it matter: the ideal gift, like the promises launched by politicians in the middle of the electoral campaign, are above these trifles. As with everything, it is a matter of faith. Of course, scientists say that smoke is bad for your health, and there are even studies that say that an excess of fresh air can harm the lungs of an outright urbanite. “To the parrot!”, what the recidivist president of Barça would say.