Maurizio Cattelan

Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite:

A gigantic middle finger sticking straight up from an otherwise fingerless hand, outside of Milan's stock exchange:

Since the early 1990s, this kind of work by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan has provoked and challenged the limits of contemporary value systems through its use of irony and humor. He teases the art world without ever falling into the naive trap of thinking he can subvert a system of which he is part. Click read more the see other works by Cattelan.

Maurizio Cattelan | Interview

Colleges and Academies of Fine Arts

I'm not really sure if arts can be taught. You can learn the history of art, the artists, the past movements, but you can't learn how to make a work of art. You can learn all the techniques and become a good painter or a good illustrator, designer or drawer, but that won't make you an artist. Of course I do realize that studying is a good start point (after all I'm an art student myself...), so I've decided to dedicate a post to the most renowned schools, colleges and academies of fine arts around the world.What you think? Is art a matter of studying or not? Can someone be an artist without ever studying it?

The Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze was founded in 1563 by Cosimo I de' Medici under the influence of Giorgio Vasari. While the Company was a kind of corporation which every working artist in Tuscan should join, the Academy was constituted only by the most eminent artistic personalities of Cosimo’s court, and had the task of supervising the whole artistic production of the medicean state. The extraordinary contribution of academics including Michelangelo Buonarroti, Francesco da Sangallo, Agnolo Bronzino, Benvenuto Cellini, Giorgio Vasari, Bartolomeo Ammannati, Giambologna, increased the prestige of this institution.

BLU

Blu is an Italian street artist. His real identity is actually unknown since many some of his early works were illegal (and smaller I suppose), or made withouth permission. Astonishing!! After the break more of his works.

Piero Manzoni - Artist's Shit (Merda d'artista, 1961)

In 1961 an Italian artist named Piero Manzoni pooped in a tin can:

And then he sold it. 
He “produced” 90 of these cans, and labeled with stickers in different languages, stating:

Artist's Shit
Contents 30 gr net
Freshly preserved
Produced and tinned
in May 1961 

Where is the art in this shit? We surely know where the shit is, but is this really art? In my opinion, the fact that a lot of people from high society and intellectual critic, since  1961, declare themselves disgusted  by this work, and keep to argue how bad and degrading this is, is enough to be considered an artistic work.

Wikipedia states  “A tin was sold for €124,000 at Sotheby's on May 23 2007; in October 2008 tin 083 was offered for sale at Sotheby's with an estimate of £50-70,000. It sold for £97,250”. People is paying that much for a can of shit? Maybe shit is not art, but having the ability to sell is surely an artistic skill.