Modern Art???

From The Washington Post
They Do Know Squat About Art
NEW YORK - It's little more than a scribble, a quick slash of ink on a 12-by-18-inch piece of plain white paper. If you saw it at the office, you might ball it up and toss it into the trash, or fold it into an airplane and fling it down the hall. It is unlikely you'd do what Christie's auction house did last week: try to sell it for $20,000.
That was the low end of the estimated price for this "ink on paper," as it was dryly described in the Christie's catalogue, by an artist living in Massachusetts named Tom Friedman. It was on display last week during the preview for the house's annual spring auction, where potential buyers and interested gawkers get a chance to sniff over the merchandise before it hits the block.
Even in the often mystifying alternative universe of contemporary art -- where you occasionally can't suppress philistine thoughts of the Wait, I could have done that variety -- this piece stood out. There it was, amid the Warhols and Basquiats, not more than 100 feet from an Edward Hopper, hanging with the titans. "Starting an old dry pen on a piece of paper," explained the Christie's catalogue. Which is to say, this thing is exactly what it looks like.
And 20 grand seemed reasonable compared with another Friedman piece being sold at the same auction. This one, also untitled, is a two-foot white cube with a barely visible black speck set right in the middle of the top surface. Would you like to guess what that black speck is? You're advised to think outside the box. To again quote Christie's, it is ".5mm of the artist's feces."
Yes, Tom Friedman put his poop on a pedestal, and last week Christie's tried to sell it, with bidding to start at $45,000. For more read here...