Writer, John Waters: I wonder why you would ask me about someone selling their own shit. We had Divine eating dog shit in a movie, and I’ve never been able to get away from that subject in my entire life.
Hi, I’m John Waters. I’m a writer and film director. This is Piero Manzoni’s Artist’s Shit No. 014.
So basically, Manzoni’s father said, “your art is shit,” which maybe gave him the idea to do that. That happened to me too. One time, I said to my father, “The movies are really spreading.” He said, “Yeah, so does cancer.”
This work is like if I bought a can of tuna, only he signed on the top and it says that it’s his artist’s shit here, and how much it weighs. He sold it for whatever gold was going for at that moment, the same price, which is hilarious.
I think he respected all the things about contemporary art: an edition, signed properly. But he made fun of those rules. Shit is never saved. It is never put in a can to keep. It is never put in an art gallery. It has never come up with a high price. Is there really shit in there? It doesn’t matter. The idea is the art. It’s all in the concept, and it makes fun of the whole idea of “what is art” more than anything else.
I love work that initially makes you angry. I love work that baits people to say, “Oh my god, my kid could have done that!”
Humor is political, so if you can get anybody to laugh at something that they’re shocked by, they’ll stop and at least listen to what you’re trying to make them see. And so now, just think, every time someone takes a shit, they think, “I could put this in a can. Would anybody buy it?”