Friday, May 25, 2007

Ebay Archaeology Update

I noticed that the notorious Ventriloquist Dummy commode painting has resurfaced on Ebay. I couldn't help but wonder if this was the same one as before, or if they are massed-produced and installed in various mansions in Beverly Hills. I forwarded that very question to the seller/artist and this was the reply:

"Over my years of being an artist I've found that a lot of people would rather buy a painting that they can use than to just hang on their wall. You see that at a lot of craft shows artist painting on flower pots, end tables, shelves etc. for buyers who like to decorate their homes with art and not just hang it on their walls.......... This is about the 6th. Vent[riloquist dummy] figure I've painted on a toilet seat, I've sold all the others"

That's a pretty unassuming answer from the source of the most subversive work of art since Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" in 1917. Duchamp's piece, which shocked critics when it was unveiled in 1917, was selected ahead of Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" and "Guernica" -- chosen second and fourth, respectively -- as the most influential work of art.

By extension, that would make this ventriloquist dummy toilet seat the über-influential work of art in the history of man. Now, if it could only talk.

And now I've redeemed myself for making this whole sordid exercise educational.

1 comment:

Joey Polanski said...

No wondr th voice comin outta my turlet souns like Edgr Bergen.