Arts: A week in the arts

Can shit be art? If so, then the converse is also probable. This is a legitimate matter of debate, a matter of scholarship, even a matter of high fashion, at the end of a week that saw the great, the good and the glitzy paying homage to 32 cans of the stuff at three separate private views over three nights at the newly renovated Serpentine Gallery.

They were the work (or waste, depending on your viewpoint) of Piero Manzoni, the late Italian conceptualist. He called the cans Merda d'artista, which needs no translation. The Serpentine, which has just spent pounds 3m of lottery money on its reopening, is the gallery of which Princess Diana was patron, and she would have presided over its reopening parties had she lived.

I watched Harry Enfield, Rory Bremner, Ffion Jenkins, Zandra Rhodes and (lest anyone doubt the eclecticism of private view guest lists) a Danish midfielder currently playing for Tottenham Hotspur, all puzzling over a glass display case containing the said cans of excrement.

It is easy to scoff at such things, though Messrs Enfield and Bremner of course, being comedians, remained sombre. But rather than scoff, I sought information from the show's curator, Germane Celant. Celant was in charge of the last Venice Biennale, so knows more than most about Merda d'artista.

It turns out that Manzoni produced the work in 1961, at the height of Italy's post-war boom, as a signed and numbered edition of 90 that were weighed and sold for the equivalent of the current market rate of gold. Their labels describe the contents as 30 grams of artist's excrement, "naturally preserved". According to Celant, "The cans offer a frank criticism of how works of art are turned into desirable objects of special meaning and value." They are not meant to be opened and their true content remains the object of conjecture.

Alas, no longer. An unhappy looking Serpentine employee confided in me that one of the cans had leaked. The contents certainly seemed to be merda, quite possibly d'artista, and she was beginning to fall out of love with gallery work.

If the work was purely a joke, a small if laboured satire on fashions in art, I suppose one might have to give a grudging smile. But we are assured that there is a serious side to Merda d'artista. Even the Serpentine's usually incisive director Julia Peyton-Jones says, "It is compelling that an artist should explore his own body as artistic matter to that degree."

In an era when a disproportionate amount of conceptual art is dependent on wit, jokes and word-play, it is disconcerting to think that, in 30 years' time, scholarly debate could decide that behind all the jokes lie genuine physical and psychological exploration. It made me wish for a stiff drink. That, sadly, was impossible. In the Serpentine Gallery, once a tea house, even a cup of tea is impossible to find after the pounds 4m renovation.

Royal Park regulations that forbid extending the building any further do give the Serpentine Gallery some problems, but with its existing flat roof overlooking Hyde Park and the Serpentine itself, the gallery could have one of the most delightful refreshment areas in London. Gallery chairman Lord Palumbo, who knows a bit about battling against planning regulations, should ensure that steps are taken soonest. Art-lovers need nourishment, though, in present circumstances, I will avoid anything in a can.