They Do Know Squat About Art

Hudson's gallery, Feature Inc., held a Friedman exhibit in 1991 and the show caught the eye of Chuck Close, a painter of considerable renown. Endorsements like that are invaluable in the art world, and in 1995 the Museum of Modern Art came calling for a show it was putting together. You'll find Friedman's art in some well-known collections, too. For a while, the pedestal was owned by Charles Saatchi, one of the world's most famous collectors.

"I wanted to find a material that you could present the smallest amount of and it would have the most impact," Friedman says of the piece. "I was really interested in minimalism then and with minimalism there's this sense of purity, of clean forms and geometry. I really liked the juxtaposition. The cube is logical and clean. The feces is regressive and insane."

The first time he exhibited the piece, someone at the gallery thought it was a stool. Scratch that. Someone thought it was a seat and sat on it. Friedman saw it happen and yelled "Stop!" but too late. He was unable to find the small, crucial part of the piece.

"I had to go home and make some more," he says.

On their big day, the Friedman items came up early. A fight for the ink scrawl started at $14,000 and within about six seconds it had sold for $26,400, including commission, to a guy in a fuchsia sweater. Then it was time for the poop on a cube, or Lot 416 as it was called by auctioneer Barbara Strongin.

"Lot 416, now showing on the screen," she said. "And $45,000 to start here. At $45,000. $48,000, at $50,000. Any advance from 50?" It might seem like someone was bidding from the way the price went up but that apparently was just the auctioneer trying to gin up interest and give the sale some forward momentum, an accepted and common tactic. There were no bidders. Strongin paused for a moment, then gave up.

"Down it goes, at $50,000," she said.

And as the white cube and the teeny dropping vanished from the screen, Strongin added a word that never in the history of fine art has ever rung so true:

"Passed."