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Overzealous cleaner accidentally damages €800,000 artwork

Officials in Dortmund say that the dried rain puddle cleared away by the cleaner was actually meant to be there.

OFFICIALS IN Dortmund say a modern-art installation valued at €800,000 was seriously damaged after an overzealous cleaning woman scrubbed away a patina intended to look like a dried rain puddle.

City spokeswoman Dagmar Papajewski said today that Martin Kippenberger’s When it Starts Dripping from the Ceiling remains in place at the city’s Ostwall museum, despite the damage from earlier this month.

Papajewski says cleaning personnel had instructions to stay at least 8 inches away from the artwork and it was not clear why the patina had fallen victim to the woman’s scrubbing brush.

The Kippenberger work was on loan to the museum from a private collection.

Kippenberger was a German artist who died in 1997.

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14 Comments
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    Mute damien chaney
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    Nov 4th 2011, 2:07 PM

    You cant beat a good old picture of dogs playing poker whilst smoking a cigar, that’s proper art none of your shite like 1/2 made beds, cows cut in 2, blank canvases that your supposed to look at and exclaim “brilliant” and of course rain puddles

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    Mute Martin O'Connor
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    Nov 4th 2011, 2:34 PM

    Philistine!

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    Mute Pete Gibson
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    Nov 4th 2011, 1:51 PM

    Adoration of “The Arts” is a 20th century stuperstision.
    Leonardo Da Viinci would be in charge of CERN or the Hubble Space Telescope were he alive today.
    (He invented the helicopter after all!)

    That cleaner should be given a medal.

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    Mute Barry
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    Nov 4th 2011, 1:59 PM

    He designed a flying machine…like many other people throughout history.
    However whilst it looks great and all it wouldn’t work if built.

    Leonardo Da Viinci also did artworks during his life, the fact he had a number of interests doesn’t mean he would understand anything to do with CERN or any space technology of our modern times.

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    Mute John Finn
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    Nov 4th 2011, 2:33 PM

    If the patina of paint in the small rubber trough at the bottom of the artwork could be so easily scrubbed off then surely it could easily have be re-applied again and no one would be the wiser. It’s not as if the cleaner had taken a Brillo pad to the Mona Lisa. The whole thing strikes me as a publicity stunt designed to get people to flock to the gallery to gaze at a piece of art that was probably ignored up till now.

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    Mute Andrew McCarthy
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    Nov 4th 2011, 4:02 PM

    If you can’t tell something is “art” without being told, is if really worthy of the title?

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    Mute Sean McNally
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    Nov 4th 2011, 4:09 PM

    The cubist yellow horse in the photo is deadly.

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    Mute Colin Sweetman
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    Nov 4th 2011, 3:20 PM

    Or you could just rename it ‘When it Starts Dripping from the Mop’

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    Mute Pete Gibson
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    Nov 4th 2011, 3:39 PM

    If you clip the signature off a Picasso painting the painting is worth nothing.
    So much for Art.

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    Mute Sean McNally
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    Nov 4th 2011, 4:07 PM

    If art is everything then art is nothing.

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    Mute Debi-Nikita Rathbone-Rentzke
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    Nov 4th 2011, 6:13 PM

    Oh shite! Well she was hired to clean, so she was just doing her job.. Still think its funny though..:)

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    Mute theresa parker
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    Nov 4th 2011, 9:44 PM

    That’s what you get for leaving stuff on the floor.

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    Mute Marian Lenehan
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    Nov 4th 2011, 9:55 PM

    hee hee

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    Mute Toureag
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    Nov 4th 2011, 9:21 PM

    Try superglue!

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