A museum in Rotterdam, Netherlands, has an art installation that consists of peanut butter covering 14 square meters of the floor. The smooth peanut butter "carpet" has no fence around it because museum directors believe it would detract from the art. You can guess it would be easy for a visitor to walk into it -and that's exactly what happened.
He was the third person to step into the exhibit over the years. http://www.news.com.au/weird-true-freaky/man-wades-across-peanut-butter-art-exhibit/story-e6frflri-1226053768611 -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Patrick Wenmakers)
Bemused tourists watched as the man sank into the 1100 litres of peanut butter - enough to fill more than 2000 regular-sized jars. He has been asked to pay for the damage after leaving a trail of footprints.
"It is normal that people pay if they damage the art," spokeswoman Sharon Cohen told the Rotterdam-based newspaper.
The pricey installation - created by the artist Wim T. Schippers in 1962 and known as the Peanut Butter Platform - has suffered similar mishaps in the past.
He was the third person to step into the exhibit over the years. http://www.news.com.au/weird-true-freaky/man-wades-across-peanut-butter-art-exhibit/story-e6frflri-1226053768611 -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Patrick Wenmakers)
Duchamp and his fellow travelers wanted to destroy the idea of art by making "art" that was literally meaningless and nonsensical. He sawed off the branch he was standing on.
It's a nonsensical, self-defeating argument. And this "art" is just another iteration of the same pointless exercise in "artistic" narcissism.
And I'll bet you the artist expected to be paid in real money -- not in Monopoly money, or a check with "THIS IS NOT A CHECK" scrawled on it. And I'll further wager the museum isn't going to let the visitor argue that walking across the peanut butter was performance art.
That said, put a rope around it. I think that's far less detracting than having people walk through it.