Economists have a term, creative destruction, which means that after a boom has poured money into all sorts of dubious enterprises, there needs be a bust that topples that which can not stand, which wipes out misallocations, and frees up resources and capital for more worthwhile investments.

But while we can have an over investment in say textiles and producers of pants, leading to a bell-bottom glut and a collapse in prices and good taste, can there ever be too much art, and could some of it be improved by a good whack of a hammer?

77-year-old Frenchman Pierre Pinoncelli certainly thought so, as he took a good swing at Marcel Duchamp's famed work of art, "Fountain", a porcelain urinal Duchamp signed "R. Mutt" in 1917 and entered in an exhibition, a clever, and initially even deep, art prank, which has, in my opinion had a largely deleterious influence on later modern art, leading to today's dominant Big White Room school of conceptual art.

Claiming to have been acquainted with the artist in the late 60s, and to only be carrying out his Dadaist wishes, he had already put the sculpture to its original use, by pissing in it, back in 1993. But on Jan. 4 of this year he went all Schumpeter on the poor thing, wielding a hammer with Thor-like élan.

"I told him in 1967 that I would do something," Pinoncelli said.

"I added to its value," he said, assuring that Duchamp would "have had a good laugh."

Come to think of it, he's probably right.

But the present owners of the piece, with a $3.9 million price tag, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, took a rather more dim view of his claim that he had only increased the value of the sculpture, by making it an "original", and sued for $523,930 in damages.

Being the inartistic and practical institution it is, the courts were a bit more lenient, slapping him with a $20,318 fine for repairs. I guess crazy glue has seen a bit of a price inflation, along with other commodities lately.

Mr Pinoncelli is of course only one of the latest in a proud tradition of art vandalism, stretching back to Herostratus, who torched the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus in ancient Greece. Indeed some, taking more than a little inspiration from Duchamp and his Dadaist mates, have turned vandalism in general into art.

Which brings us back to the initial point, that the lion's share of modern art is pants.


This article is also available at The European Tribune.