Merda by Piero Manzoni. Photograph: Tate
When George Romero made Dawn Of The Dead it was thought to be the final word in shopping-mall-based social critique. But that was before last week and the story of the eight artists who secretly lived inside a US shopping mall for four years in a furnished apartment they created. Although they had no fridge, toilet or running water, the artists got by with jugs of drinking water and availing themselves of the mall's toilet facilities. This remarkable piece of conceptual art was explained by the group's leader, performance artist Michael Townsend, as a way "to explore the phenomenon of the modern American enclosed mall, its social implications, and his own relationship with commerce and the world". This sounds fantastic and very noble but if the purpose of art is to provoke thought, wasn't most people's first thought "four years without a toilet?"
Regardless though, Townsend et al's work has now entered the canon of pieces of conceptual art that have gained notoriety. Famous recent examples include Martin Creed's Turner Prize-winning light going on and off and Tracey Emin's bed. But those two are really amateurs when it comes to shocking public sensibilities. Piero Manzoni exhibited tins of his own faeces - placing the tins on sale for their own weight in gold (ITV have been doing something similar with their sitcoms for years). Then there was Vitto Acconci who masturbated beneath the floorboards of a gallery as people viewed his work above. Provocative certainly, but to what end?
So do you think the shopping mall experiment achieved its stated aim of exploring the social significance of the mall or was it no different from any other illegal squat filled with feckless artists? Exactly how much conceptual art is valid and how much consists merely of vacuous puerile stunts with no artistic merit? And would the public be more accepting of conceptual art if there was a bit less urine and faeces involved?
