The sensational “Artist’s shit” by Piero Manzoni

It has been stated that Manzoni was only a practicing artist for six years (1957 — 1963) and that his ideas have not yet been properly investigated fifty years later. While his reputation has been tarnished by the persistence of his humor, he was philosophically sophisticated and assured in his ability to address modern issues. Manzoni’s work might be dissected in light of Italy’s late 1950s and early 1960s economic, cultural, and creative challenges.

Additionally, by focusing on early 20th-century avant-garde movements and reexamining the roles of the artist, method, product, and audience. His art reacted to the contemporary art movement away from modernism’s gestural emphasis and toward postmodern ideas.

Manzoni was a person who was influenced by the left-wing art critics and political artists who frequented the bars in Milan. His shifting political views included an anti-violence resistance to fascism, a rejection of religion, and a friendly but critical stance toward communism’s ideals.

He was also interested in modern philosophical thinking, which emphasized his artistic work. Manzoni’s high level of social, political, and philosophical engagement in Milan, which cannot be understood by social, cultural, or historical analysis, significantly influenced his artistic temperament and practice. His work is combined with “low culture” faces with subservient humour to allay his industrial phobias.

Multiples were promoted as progressive art that aimed to humanize capitalism from inside, according to the dominant viewpoint. The “subversive humor” of artists shit was primarily a critique of this art market, mass production and consumerism. Manzoni opposed the growing commercialization of art by making fun of both the contemporary customer and the artist.

Due to the rising industrialization, Manzoni used his artistic practice to challenge the worth of the commodity. Manzoni discusses how mass production reduces the individuality and uniqueness of products in “Merda d’artista”. His work was evidence of an approach to subjectivity and the unfolding of the work in time and space that was later developed by Arte Povera.

Artist’s shit has been a leading reason for avant-garde art. Manzoni questioned the expressiveness and unintentional allusions of modern art using avant-garde and Dadaist ideologies.

When Manzoni first sent 90 cans of shit to different art galleries from all around the world, he has the effect of an earthquake. It’s like breaking the ground which art world walks in two pieces. Simple but effective way of revolting. Also the biggest breakdown since Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain.

Both art pieces have affect of revolution and criticizing. Manzoni’s artwork also demonstrates how Dada, like Duchamp with his castaway urinal he signed and labeled Fountain, questioned conventional notions of creativity and human expression through the use of atypical techniques and mediums.

It can be obtained that there is a “ready-made” cross reference to Duchamp as well as Pop Art reference and mass production of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans.

As a matter of fact, each can has the following information in four different languages: the name of the artist, a unique number, “30 grams net,” “made in Italy,” and “freshly created and tinned on May 1961.” to the world of people. These particulars make the product seem ordinary to an object-fatigued consumers.

Manzoni’s exploration of human nature, and his enquiry into the elements that define an artwork, led him to explore the limits of the body, nature, art and the world itself. Carolyn Chistov-Bakargiev

To examine the fact why this cans full with shit can be considered as art is that,

Manzoni explored this idea by setting the same value as 30 grams of gold. He priced them by weight based on gold. If we look at that particular era gold is the most valuable material and shit has no value whatsoever.

• Since any work of art could be reified as a commodity in post-war capitalism, art and money became more closely related.

Due to his influence by Marxism, which leads to the problematic status of the commodity in a capitalist economy, he was captivated by the idea of transforming any item into art that could be sold. Second reason is that Artist’s Shit produced by an artist so it can be value as artistic piece, also he carries the work of art in conceptual level and physically embodies a very concrete thing.

A piece of art must also be produced, experienced, and lived in its whole.

In addition, parallels between Duchamp’s use of ironically vulgar and unattractive materials to create tactile, abstract art, as well as Manzoni’s method of artistic expression, which illustrates the practice on go back to basics. According to the academics and some criticisers he was the heir to the Dada movement.

Germano Celant was one of the first individuals to view Manzoni as a critical artist. Manzoni’s work “just is and that is it,” he declared in 1969, adding that “a societal interpretation of [Manzoni’s work] is pointless, as is every attempt to situate his works in a historical context.”

Celant’s perspective had drastically shifted by 1975, when Manzoni published his general catalogue. To demonstrate how Manzoni was still relevant as an artist involved in a critique of contemporary society, consumerism, and the art market in this case, he utilized Marxist concepts.

Finally, it can be said that a piece of art must also be produced, experienced, and lived in its whole. Manzoni’s unusual and anti-aesthetic work is a part of the radical art movement that began fifty years earlier with individuals like Marcel Duchamp and was revived and remade in the 1960s. It was a parody of multiples’ shady good deeds and the ideologies they represented, particularly in northern Italy. This is related to “Artist’s shit” because it is one of many pieces created by the Italian artist who explored a wide range of themes drawn from early modern popular culture.

Manzoni’s father was a cannery owner who allegedly told his son, ‘Your work is shit.’ Manzoni stated in a letter to fellow artist Ben Vauthier: If collectors want something intimate, really personal to the artist, there’s the artist’s own shit, that is really his.