Cleaner Ruins 800,000€ Artwork That She Thought Was Dirty

GERMANY EYESORE SCRUB Kippenberger DORTMUND CEILING SPREAD REPRESENTING CHALLENGE BUCKET ORIGINAL MUSEUM CLEANING UNCLEAR

   An overzealous cleaner in ___ has ruined a piece ___ modern art worth 800,000€ ___ mistaking it for an ___ that needed a good ___.

   The sculpture, by Martin ___, had been on loan ___ the Ostwall Museum in ___. The work, called When ___ Starts Dripping from the ___, comprised a rubber bucket. ___ the bucket, Kippenberger had ___ a layer of paint ___ dried rainwater. He thought ___ was art, but the ___ saw it as a ___ and set about making ___ bucket look like new ___ removed the patina from ___ four walls of the ___.

   "It is now impossible ___ return it to its ___ state." a spokeswoman for the ___ said.

   She said that ___ crews had been told ___ keep 20 cm away ___ artworks, but it was ___ if the woman had received the memo.

   But Kippenberger is not the only artist to have his works ruined by cleaners. In 1986, a "grease stain" by Joseph Beuys valued at about 400,000€ was mopped away at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf.

   In 2004, a cleaner at Tate Britain in London threw away part of a work by another German artist, Gustav Metzger, after mistaking it for rubbish. The cleaner failed to realise that a plastic bag containing discarded paper and cardboard was an integral part of Recreation of First Public Demonstration of AutoDestructive Art, and not just some litter. The bag was later recovered, but it was too damaged to display, so Metzger replaced it with another bag.

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Have fun....and take care! 256 JUN-B-2012