In 1961, artist Piero Manzoni produced 90 tin cans containing his own feces and offered them for sale for an equivalent weight in gold. This was actually quite a bargain, because the Tate Museum in London purchased one can in 2002 for 22,400 pounds, and other cans have sold in 2007 for 124,000 euros and in 2008 for 97,250 pounds.
Manzoni stated that his work was inspired by his father, who purportedly told him that "your art is s---."
One acquaintance of the artist now claims that the whole project was a fraud and that the cans contain plaster instead of pure excrement. So far, no one has tested this assertion by opening one of the cans and destroying, in the process, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of art. Other collectors have indicated that some of their cans have exploded over time and that there is no doubt that they contain the real thing.
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