Erwin Wurm’s Perfect Day: “I’d ask Piero Manzoni if it’s really his crap in the can”

In Erwin Wurm’s work, the joke always lands. Over three decades, the Austrian artist’s punchy, witty, often candy-coloured sculptures have skewed familiar objects to ludicrous effect: cars and houses bulge with fatty overspills, chairs become wearable(ish) and luxury goods (mostly handbags) take on lives of their own. Beneath the punchlines are weightier questions about politics, consumerism and the value we assign to everyday objects. Wurm’s cosmic imagination made him the ideal candidate to inaugurate this series: a carte-blanche, no-limits take on a fantasy Perfect Day.

Morning

There are many possibilities, it depends on the mood of the special day. There is normally so much daily bullshit you have to do before you can get to work. So I would like to wake up (at 7 am, as usual) and not even have breakfast; I wouldn’t need to eat because I would already be filled up. And I wouldn’t need to wash myself because I’d already be clean and it’s a waste of time. I could go immediately to the studio and work and nobody would disturb me. If something needed to be lifted, then it would be lifted by my mental strength and imagination. It would be total freedom; I would be alone and I could do whatever I wanted. That would be the dream. No visitors, please!

I would then go out for coffee with my old friends, and not talk about anything important; just hang out and do nothing.

Afternoon 

For lunch, I would go to this fantastic sushi guy in Japan, Jiro Ono, who is now 97 years old and owns a little restaurant in Tokyo. He is a master and one of the greatest sushi chefs in the world. Or I’d have Tom Yum Goong Soup in some advanced Thai restaurant. Or I would go to Harry’s Bar in Venice, and just enjoy the restaurant and its worn-out walls, and the great food.

I would go on a walk around Tokyo with Picasso or Franz West, or one of the early Japanese woodcutters or calligraphists. Then I would ask Henry Thoreau about the real reason he wrote On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. I read that he didn’t want to pay taxes.

I would also like to see the Oldowan industry (2.9 million years ago) in Africa, where they created very early tools long before Homo sapiens.

Later, I could travel to 1915 for ‘The Last Exhibition of Futurist Painting 0.10’ held in St Petersburg, the exhibition where Malevich first showed his Black Square. Or perhaps Yves Klein’s Le Vide (The Void), for which he emptied a gallery in Paris and painted it white. Or I would like to be in one of his performances where nude, paint-covered women rolled on canvases to make paintings (Anthropometries).

I saw an early image of Lucio Fontana destroying and tearing a canvas apart which I think was the beginning of his cuts in canvases, so I would like to ask him if that’s true or not. I might also ask Piero Manzoni if it’s really his crap in the can for Artist’s Shit or if it’s someone else’s. Or not even crap, but something else.

Evening

The evening might be humble, peaceful and quiet with no parties, and no drinking. But, as you’ve given me the chance to fantasise, I might have dinner with the early Dadaists, or Allan Kaprow and his group of performance artists. I would also like to attend one of Joseph Beuys’ Siberian Symphony concerts. I would also like to meet Madame de Pompadour – I think she’s fantastic.

I would have dinner with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart because I’ve heard he was a crazy guy and I’d like to see how crazy he really was. He is also Vienanese, so this brings us back to Vienna. The Emperor of Vienna, Joseph II, was a big supporter of Mozart, so maybe we could all have dinner. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to be part of it, but see it like a fly on the wall.

That evening, I would sleep in one of the beds of the Emperor’s palace, though not in the Emperor’s bed! As we know, they didn’t wash very much back then.