Paris court tosses Duchamp urinal fine
Fri Feb 9, 7:28 AM ET
PARIS - A French appeals court ruled Friday that a 78-year-old Frenchman who attacked Marcel Duchamp's famed porcelain urinal with a hammer last year does not have to pay $260,000 in damages.
Pierre Pinoncelli chipped the work, valued at $3.6 million, during a January 2006 exhibition of the Dada movement at the Pompidou Center in Paris.
He also scrawled "Dada" on the urinal.
At the time Pinoncelli said his actions were not vandalism but a "wink" at the early 20th century art movement that had Duchamp's blessing. Duchamp, who died in 1968, emphasized the creative process and a role for the spectator.
The lower court that convicted Pinoncelli last year gave him a three-month suspended sentence and ordered him to pay the Pompidou $18,600 for repairs and another $260,000 to cover the artwork's depreciation.
The appeals court upheld the suspended sentence and the smaller fine but said Pinoncelli did not have to pay the Pompidou for any loss of value to the "Fountain" because the museum doesn't own the work.
Pinoncelli urinated on "Fountain" during a 1993 exhibition in Nimes in southern France, and cut off his own finger as an expression of solidarity with Colombian-French politician Ingrid Betancourt, held hostage by leftist guerrillas in Colombia since 2002.