[Jed] Ela did the reverse of DuChamp: he exhibited a single role of a toilet paper he had thought of as a joke, called ‘Shitbegone’.  The exhibit was a great success, and Ela realised he could actually make money by mass-producing Shitbegone and selling it in stores.  What differentiates this from the sale of other artistic reproductions is that Ela markets Shitbegone as toilet paper, not as art: he sells it by the case (“96 double rolls for $44.99. That's 47 cents per roll!”).  What started as something like Warhol’s soup cases turns into an idiosyncratic case of the product development and marketing of a basic essential commodity.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:21:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments