Urinal Art Attack

A 77-year-old Frenchman who attacked and damaged a plain porcelain urinal that was declared a work of art by Dada pioneer Marcel Duchamp has been fined 214,000 euros ($302,446). A Paris court also gave Pierre Pinoncelli a three-month suspended sentence. The urinal, called Fountain, was slightly chipped after Pinoncelli hit it with a hammer. It had been on display at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Pinoncelli explained to the court he had attacked the work in the same absurdist spirit Duchamp had used to declare it art. "This was a wink at Dadaism," Pinoncelli told the court, according to Reuters. "I wanted to pay homage to the Dada spirit." He spent a night in police custody after the attack. It was his second run-in with the work — the man had urinated on the same piece at an exhibition in Nimes, in southern France, in 1993. In 2004 a group of British art experts called Fountain one of the most influential art works of the 20th century. For the full story - click the title Irish Art