Critically acclaimed modern art

01

Rhythm 0

Abramović placed 72 objects on a table — razor, wine, loaded pistol — and let strangers use them on her body for six hours. By hour three, someone had pressed the gun to her temple.

02

Andres Serrano

Serrano sank a plastic crucifix in a tank of his own urine, photographed it glowing amber, and received a $15,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant. Congress spent months trying to defund the NEA.

03

Jake and Dinos Chapman

The Chapmans bought a complete set of Goya's 'Disasters of War' etchings — 80 prints of dismembered soldiers — and painted Ronald McDonald and clown faces over the victims' heads. They called it 'rectification.'

04

Shoot (performance artwork)

On November 19, 1971, Chris Burden stood in a Santa Ana gallery while a friend fired a .22 rifle at him from 15 feet. The bullet was meant to graze; it did. Five seconds of art history.

05

Piero Manzoni

In 1961 Manzoni sealed his own excrement into 90 numbered tins, priced each at its weight in gold, and signed them. Tin No. 18 sold at Sotheby's in 2016 for £182,500.

06

Chris Burden

In 1971 Burden asked an assistant to shoot him in the left arm with a .22 rifle inside a Santa Ana garage. The bullet grazed the bone. The event lasted five seconds and was witnessed by a handful of people.

07

Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn

Ai Weiwei photographed himself dropping a Han Dynasty urn worth an estimated $1 million, in three frames: hold, release, shatter. The triptych hangs in museums. The urn is gravel.

08

Cut Piece 1964

Yoko Ono knelt on a Carnegie Hall stage in 1965 while audience members cut away her clothing with scissors, piece by piece, until she sat in her underwear. She did not flinch or speak.

09

Artist's Shit

Ninety tins of Piero Manzoni's sealed feces sit in museum collections worldwide. Tin No. 083 sold for €275,000 in 2022 — worth more per gram than gold, exactly as Manzoni priced it in 1961.

10

Chris Ofili

Ofili painted the Virgin Mary with a clump of elephant dung as one breast and pornographic collage for her halo. Mayor Giuliani called it 'disgusting' and tried to evict the Brooklyn Museum in 1999.