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Court fines man for damaging urinal art work
Update:
An appeals court in Paris on Friday confirmed a conviction against Pierre Pinoncelli, a self-proclaimed performance artist who vandalised the world's most famous urinal.

In January last year Pinoncelli, 77, used a small hammer to attack "Fountain" by French-US artist Marcel Duchamp, which was on display at the Pompidou Centre as part of an exhibition on the early 20th-century Dada movement. He also scrawled the word "Dada" to indicate that he was acting in the sprit of Dadaism -- a precursor to Surrealism.

A lower court gave him a three month suspended prison term and ordered him to pay 214,000 euros (280,000 dollars). On Friday the appeals court confirmed the sentence but cut the fine to just 14,000 euros for the cost of restoration.

Eight versions of Duchamp's urinal exist, and the Pompidou Centre's example is valued at 2.8 million euros.
Posted by: Seafarious 2007-02-11
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=180094