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| Socle du Monde - Piero Manzoni 1961 |
I've always liked my art to be a little bit humorous/witty. Which is probably why I gravitate towards art created in the latter half of the 20th Century - there seems to be more of a sense of ironic detachment in the works than there is in earlier eras. The conceptual artist Piero Manzoni has always been one of my favourites. He's probably best know for canning and selling 91 tins of his own excrement - which when you think about it, is a pretty devastating critique of the art industry (people were literally paying good money for the privilege of owning crap).
My favourite piece of his is Socle du Monde, which translates into "Base of the World". The piece consists of a metal box with the words "socle du monde" written upside down. The viewer needs to picture flipping the piece right-side up - which would mean flipping the world upside down and would thus make the box literally the base/pedestal of the world. It's pretty clever, and makes Earth a work of art (sort of echoes Hamlet's "all the world's a stage" too).
Anyways, this piece has always made me smile.
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