http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060106/lf_afp/afplifestylefranceart_060106144405
The hitch is that the urinal in question is the famous Dada-ist work Fountain by Marcel Duchamp.
Here’s what gets me:
The same guy did it before! You’d think they’d be more careful, since someone tried to damage it once already.
It ain’t the Pieta, but they should still try to keep it safe.
Didn’t it also get ‘vandalised’ while on display at Tate Modern in London, when a wannabe conceptual artist pissed in it?
The BBC news bulletins are saying that he claims it was ‘performance art’.
Talk about taking the piss.
I’m glad. It’s a freaking standard issue urinal for ogs sake!! Go take another one out of a stall some place. To me calling the urinal “art” is when art jumped the shark. No wonder art classes aren’t being taught anymore and the vast majority of people don’t go to museums. The whole art community is a circle jerk of talentless buffoon trying to avoid doing any real work.
I tend to scan titles fairly quickly. This leads to some mis-reads. For example, this time I thought it said ‘Penis damaged in urinal’.
That article says the urinal is “considered a seminal piece to come from the early 19th-century,” and then goes on to say it was made in 1917.
Argh!
Wasn’t that a joke? I mean calling the urinal art, not the stealing it.
Argh, indeed! Who would want to use a seminal toilet?
I have trouble taking this story seriously. I mean, c’mon.
A urinal.
In Paris?
Or a wannabe critic, a la History of the World, Part I?
I’m waiting for somebody to vandalize it by doctoring it with a faked, but plausible-looking, image of the Virgin. Now, that’d be a museum clusterf@*% I’d pay to see! 
As I was scrolling down the forum I first read this as “Urinal Damaged in Penis”, not Paris. Sheesh, I need to pay attention.
That’ll certainly be news to all those art majors I see getting up to go to lecture at 8 AM.
This is absolutely beautiful. Just imagine it as a Patti Smith song - I nearly am tearing up.
"The urnial was being a display for dadist art
From the other end of the exhibit a rhythm was generating
An old man was sliding up the display
He merged perfectly with the display
He merged perfectly, the urnial in the display
The urinal looked at Warren, the urinal wanted to run,
Warren took the urinal, he smashed it with a hammer
He drove it in, he drove it home, he drove it deep in the urinal
The urinal cracked, Warren fell on his knees,
started crashing the urinal with his hammer,
started crashing the urinal with his hammer,
started laughing hysterically
When suddenly!
Warren!
Gets the feeling!
He’s being surrounded by…
coppers, coppers, coppers, coppers
coming in in all directions!
blue shining silver studs with their nose in flames…
He saw!
coppers, coppers, coppers, coppers, coppers, coppers…"
Now, who knows what I am talking about? Pisser it all.
Yeah, and by a guy named Dumpchamp.
Go back and look at the picture in the link. Notice anything unusual? When I saw it, I looked at the round hole facing the camera. WTF? You piss in it and all the piss pours out onto the front of your pants? 
Finally it dawned on me. The picture is taken from a very strange angle. The urnial is laying flat on the ground. The hole is in the top of the urnial, not the front. :smack: