Alexandre Lavet Work Mistaken for Rubbish at LAM Museum

By Calla Mitchell

‘Art or rubbish?’ It appears as if anything is a green-go in the art scene nowadays, but have things turned a little too green? Comedian, 2019, a playful prank by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan—which consists of a banana duct-taped to a wall—really tickled the art industry under its armpits. The joke was taken all too seriously by collectors, when two of the three editions were each sold for USD 120,000 at Art Basel Miami Beach. What a laugh! It seems the art world is not ticklish in the slightest. But really, who defines the essence of what makes something ‘art’ and the creator an artist? It might just be up to the viewer, although the intelligent individuals who paid those vast sums for rotting bananas, seemingly confirming Cattelan’s series as ‘art’, feels reminiscent of the gullible, ostentatious emperor in Hans Christian Anderson’s nineteenth century folk-tail ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’.

Exhibition view in glass elevator at LAM and the work after being found in a bin.

Image courtesy of LAM and The Times.

A recent incident at the LAM Museum in Lisse, the Netherlands, re-opens this delightfully contentious can-of-worms. The comical newsflash writes: whilst on duty, an elevator electrician mistook a distinguished art piece as rubbish and very courteously chucked them out. Gosh, the electrician may have pondered, such careless littering as a result of consumerism. However, disaster struck when curator Elisah van den Bergh discovered the works to be missing. Found in a garbage bag moments before they would have been sent to the dumpster, the work only needed a brush-off before it was returned to safety.

Alexandre Lavet, All the Good Times We Spent Together, 2016, acrylic paint on aluminium, varnish, variable dimensions.

Image courtesy of LAM Museum.

The artwork in question, Alexandre Lavet’s All the Good Times, 2016, consists of two hand-painted cans illustrating the Belgium beer Jupiler. Intentionally dented to arouse a sense of discarded reality, the beer cans serve as symbolic souvenirs evoking memories of ‘Brussels streets, artists’ studios, friends’ flats, [and] parties’, through an object which ‘brings people together’.

 This hilarious and innocent accident has provoked a few giggles. I am attracted to Cattelan and Van Den Bergh’s dismantlement of the traditional, status-inducing plinth. The audience is promoted from worshipper—a canonical aspect of viewership the work attempts to subvert—to engager.  And subvert it (maybe too successfully) does. As Sietske van Zanten, director of the LAM Museum, states, the incident serves as ‘a testament to the effectiveness of Lavet’s art’. Placed in an elevator shaft, the work calls the viewer to respond intimately and consider the collection’s theme of food and consumption. As Van Den Bergh tells ABC News, ‘we enjoy surprising our visitors, so no space is off-limits’. For some, this intimacy is returned with a chuck in the bin!

Funnily enough, Lavet’s work was not the first piece of modern art to be thrown away or damaged while on display. Last year, a rather peckish student in South Korea ate an edition of Cattelan’s Comedian. In Germany in 2011, a cleaner accidentally scrubbed the patina off a Martin Kippenberger sculpture valued at USD one million. But hey! I say the monetary value of art is such celebrity nonsense—regardless, my condolences to Kippenberger. Damien Hirst’s installation of candy wrappers, newspapers, and empty beer bottles also got the toss in 2001. Thankfully, he reportedly found the incident ‘hysterically funny’, as he views his work as centred around ‘the relationship between art and the everyday’.

Akin to Cattelan, Kippenberger, and Hirst, Lavet’s choice of medium recalls Duchamp’s idea of the ‘readymade’. The loaded term evokes ideas of rejecting exhibition status, celebrity status, and the very definition of creativity, a process historically restricted and defined by artistic academies, critics, and the social elite. This artwork tackles all such debates; the unconventional location and pre-made, bought body of the artwork strip the piece of traditional pretentiousness. As Van Zanten explains, ‘our art encourages visitors to see everyday objects in a new light’. However, a stark difference to the ‘readymade’ is the craftsmanship of Lavet’s painstakingly replicated designs through the use of acrylic and varnish. Lavet’s All the Good Times is both fun and impressive…. impressive enough to fool a busy technician!

Do they tickle your fancy? Or would you have tossed them too?

Bibliography

Anderson, Sonja. ‘Museum Workers Have Rescued an Artwork from the Trash After a Mechanic Mistook It for Garbage.’ Published October 11, 2024, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/museum-workers-have-rescued-an-artwork-from-the-trash-after-a-mechanic-mistook-it-for-garbage-180985240/.

Krasteva, Gergana. ‘Museum’s ‘Beer Can’ Artwork so Lifelike It was Thrown in a Bin.’ Published October 8, 2024, https://metro.co.uk/2024/10/08/artists-beer-can-trash-artwork-good-thrown-bin-staff-21755348/.

Haworth, Jon. ‘Beer Can Artwork Accidentally Trashed by Museum Worker.’ Published October 8, 2024, https://abcnews.go.com/International/beer-artwork-accidentally-trashed-museum-worker/story?id=114588747.