“The Crap Artist”

It’s been some time now since Jason Moore lowered his pants and took a shit on a canvas. No, he didn’t do it in public (god forbid!), but looking back, he might have been better off if he did. Because, as it turned out, no one gave a shit that Jason shit on a canvas. The great galleries of New York, scattered throughout Chelsea and SoHo, absolutely refused, refused to have that ‘thing’ on their walls; not just because it meant nothing and was awful, but because no building in New York needs to try an attract roaches and flies. After days shopping it around to even the lowest-brow of the high-brow, Jason realized that all he had was a wooden frame covered by fabric, covered in shit.

“I would only be so honored to have this man shit on me”

– Jason Dorger, New York Art Collector

But the do-it-yourself spirit still exists here on the Manhattan Islands and a week later Jason had begun trying to sell his repugnant work right in Central Park. Still, though, no one bought it (would you?). And save for the few tourists who were willing and quite excited to drop a few dollars and take a photo with the shitty artist, Jason found himself broke and completely ignored.

A few weeks of this went by until a grounds keeper, a old man, finally tried to get him to leave, saying gently:

“I’m no art critic and certainly don’t call myself ‘cultured’, but isn’t that just…shit on a canvas? I have enough work to do, cleaning up the pests attracted to human trash, it’s not really fair to make me chase after the ones associated with human feces, right?”

“What he’s really doing is exposing our own discomfort with our own internal processes. Throwing shit on people, though seemingly offensive to philistines, is really an attempt to get us back in touch with our humanness and a true work of genius”

–The New York Times

But the artist: hungry, bitter, and angry was thoroughly unmoved by the plight of this kind working man and in a fit of talentless, unexpressed rage, threw a whole handful of the substance decorating his canvas right into the man’s face.

“It’s not really shit throwing, but a satire on shit throwing. I don’t see how that’s offensive.”

– William Gibbons, Art Professor, Columbia University.

The small noise formed by the feces hitting face seemed to reverberate throughout the park. The laughing children, the business people on lunch break, the bad teenagers cutting school all began to crowd around, as the man wiped the shit off his face, everyone staring like it was car accident: interesting, strange, and ‘Hell, thank God it’s not me’.

“True Brilliance! Testing the limits of society, like all artists should. Those who criticise him reveal themselves as thoroughly unintelligent and wrong. Shit is the new paint.”

–The Village Voice

But Jason’s anger didn’t subside after marking the old man; he now began to throw more and more of it at the people around him, which didn’t cause the crowd to run away or diminish, but grow and keep growing. The shit-throwing spectacle soon became a major media event, with crowd and coverage reaching the levels of those ‘Free Concerts in the Park’ they used to have. It took thirteen bathroom trips that day for Jason to replenish his stock (the port-o-john he used has since been named after him), the last four of which were broadcast live for the whole world to see.

“Awesome, just awesome. Throwing shit on people is the shit.”

–Maxim

Now, after all the books have been written, after Jason has displayed the ‘Shit Catapult’ he built in both the MoMA and the Met, after a major international tour saw our celebrity throwing feces on an array of foreigners (causing minor diplomatic incidents each time), and after the art-history classes and museum study-departments have been filled with practitioners of ‘Excrementism’, and even after the cool kids have taken to wearing designer t-shirt with fake shit-stains on them, I still have to admit–though I do so in a whisper–that: I don’t get it.