This is indeed a work. At the beginning of October, the Museum of Modern Art (LAM) in Lisse, in the Netherlands, almost saw one of its works mysteriously disappear after the passage of garbage collectors. Because it was found in a museum trash can All the good times we spent together, a unique piece created in 1988 by the French artist Alexandre Lavet. On his websitethe LAM tells this incredible story.
On the day of the tragedy, the technician who usually took care of maintaining the museum’s elevators was replaced at short notice by one of his colleagues. If the latter knows his job well, he was not really aware of the current exhibitions at the LAM. So when he tackled one of the impressive glass elevators, he didn’t hesitate to throw two empty beer cans left there in the trash.
Cans that look like cans
Except that what he had taken for common trash was in fact a work ofAlexandre Lavetinstalled on purpose in the elevator, the LAM having gotten into the habit of exhibiting certain pieces from its collections “in unusual places”, explains the museum.
The theme of the collection to which it belongs All the good times we spent together is “food and consumption”. The idea is to encourage “visitors to see everyday objects in a new light,” assures the LAM. The technician saw it as waste and did what he thought was the best thing to do: throw it away.
Moreover, by the LAM’s own admission, the work in question resembles “at first glance like two empty beer cans”. Except that the artist devoted “a lot of time” and infinite “care” to painting these dented cans “by hand with acrylic”. A reproduction so perfect that the museum has “no hard feelings towards the technician”, who “simply did his work in good faith”, recognizes the director, Sietske Van Zanten.
Luckily, the LAM curator quickly noticed the cans were missing and launched a thorough search of the entire museum. It was “in a garbage bag, ready to be thrown away” that the fake beers were found “intact”. To avoid another mistake, the Frenchman’s work was placed “on a traditional base” at the entrance to the museum.