Your Jokes About Modern Art or Sausages in Jacuzzis Here

Good ol' P.S.1 has been showing works from NY area artists in its Greater New York 2005 show. However, one artist, Mike Bouchet, causing been making a stink. Literally: His work, "Celebrity Hot Tub for Kofi Annan," has been making visitors ill, according to the NY Post. (For your NY Post conspiracy theorists, Rupert hates modern art!) How does Bouchet achieve this powerful audience reaction? The sculpture has a "rotting sausage stewing in a [Jacuzzi] of noxious water." One staffer told the Post, "Sure, it's terrible, everyone complains, someone vomited. It got real bad, we didn't know you had to clean it out. The guards are really mad about this." And other artists in the exhibit aren't that happy either. The best part about this is that Bouchet went back to his new home in Germany when the exhibit opened, and didn't leave instructions on how to maintain the work; the water and sausage were replaced, but the smell was back soon. This is totally like Gothamist's third grade science project, the one we made up the morning it was due - "What will happen to ice when it's left out of the freezer?" Clearly, sausage in a Jacuzzi in a museum would rot. But while Gothamist would like ot claim this is the grossest thing in a public museum/area we can think of, it's not. In San Francisco, there was an exhibit of corpses, which started to leak...and then the Conservatory of Flowers has the world's stinkiest flower.

Gawker noted a strange fake press release for this PS1 exhibition.

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By Jen Chung in Arts and Events on June 3, 2005 8:39 AM

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Richie Boy

It makes you rethink your whole notion of what art is and—with sensory confronting irreverence and verve—challenges spaces or institutions that define and qualify that art. I mean, I went to some parties in high school and college that were real sausage fests that stank to high heaven. Is that art? We were pissed off because we had artfully invited all these girls with the promise of free wine coolers but the only ladies who showed up were either the girlfriends of other guys at the party or a few random girls that every guy competed for no matter how attractive they were.

And, talk about that crazy mirror within a mirror within a mirror image that freaks you out when changing into khakis at Banana Republic. My friend Chappy had a hot tub at his parent’s house and someone always passed out in it. Well, he passed out in it one night with a plate of hot dogs he had made to curb the effects of ten beer-bonged MGDs, so that in the morning the mushy buns had disintegrated and clung to the sides and two fetid hot dogs floated like nasty turds in the water. Sweet! That was art!