UnNews:Rich guy takes dump on famous painting

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18 October 2006

Computer simulation of turd on Picasso.

LOS ANGELES, California -- (Routers, not that other wire) - Picasso's famed "Dream" painting turned into a portable toilet for Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn when he accidentally took a big, stinky crap on it.

Wynn had just finalized a $139 million sale to another collector of his painting, called "Le Reve" (The Dream), when he squeezed out a pretty good-sized doot on the artwork while it was temporarily sitting in one of his ritzy mansion's many bathrooms a couple of weeks ago.

Director and screenwriter Nora Ephron, who witnessed and related the incident in her blog on the Huffington Post Web site (www.huffingtonpost.com), also took a quick little piss on the artwork.

Wynn had lowered his pants and was about to drop the kids off at the pool, when he failed to notice Picasso's 1932 portrait of his mistress Marie-Therese Walter sitting nearby.

"At that moment, he slipped and dropped a big poo log right on the canvas. There was a terrible noise," Ephron wrote, noting that Wynn has retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease that damages peripheral vision.

"Smack in the middle ... was a lump of excrement about the size of a Polish sausage on it. 'Oh shit, he said. Look what I've done. Thank goodness it was me.'"

The painting was quickly cleaned off, but experts say that little chunks of crap matter will be permanently embedded in the famous work, either raising or lowering its value, depending on when the paintings' owner dies. In the art world, a painting by a dead artist, shat upon by a dead celebrity owner, in the right market, could fetch a billion dollars or more.

Sources

• Carl Jung "Of paintings and poop" Routers, October 18, 2006