Is it art? Or is it just rubbish? I do not use the term"rubbish" in a euphemistic or Pickwickian sense, meaning "a product of dubious, indeed, shoddy quality." I mean the real thing: open soup cans, used paper towels, coffee grounds, orange peels, egg shells, the remains of last night’s dinner, some crumpled paper that should have been recycled if only you were more ecologically aware--that sort of thing. I hope that readers will remember as fondly as I do that Janitor of Genius who, tidying up after an art-world party at a London gallery, also tidied up a piece--which is to say a work of art offered to the public for ready money--by the art prankster Damien Hirst. Or how about the suicide that a hip-public mistook for a cutting-edge performance piece? Delicious, was it not? (Except, of course, for the protagonist.) The Suicide or Performance Piece act was in Berlin. And now Frankfurt has come along to offer us The Garbage Man Who Cleared Away the Work of Art He Thought Was Rubbish.
To the dustmen of Frankfurt, they were a mess that needed to be cleared from the streets of their spotless city. The yellow plastic sheets were swiftly scooped up, crushed and burned.
But the diligence of the rubbish collectors was little consolation to the city’s prestigious art academy, which is now ruing the loss of an important work. Unknown to the binmen, the sheets were part of a city-wide exhibition of modern sculpture by Michael Beutler, a graduate of Frankfurt’s Städel art school.
The outcome or upshot? Re-education for the hapless garbagemen.
Thirty of the dustmen are now being sent to modern art classes to try to ensure that the same mistake never happens again.
If it were up to me, they would be given the keys to the city and a lifetime exemption from having to look at public "art."
Many thanks to my friend Gary Shapiro for putting me on to this latest instance of life imitating non-art.
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