Body of Air
Date: 1960
Art Form: Installation Art
"Corpo d'aria" ("Body of Air"; plural "Corpi d'aria") is an "artist's multiple" by the Italian artist Piero Manzoni. Manufactured between October 1959 and March 1960, the pieces comprise of a box, a tripod base, deflated balloon and a mouthpiece. 45 copies were made and sold at 30,000 lire each. Originally, any buyer could ask Manzoni to inflate the balloon himself, but would be charged an extra Deutschmark for every litre of air expanded. When fully expanded, the balloons measured 80 cm in diameter.
The "Corpi d'aria" were first exhibited at the Galleria Azimut, run by Manzoni and his friend, the Italian artist Enrico Castellani, from May 3 to May 9, 1960. Manzoni organised an elaborate photo shoot and a short film to publicise the event. He was to write later in the year that the bodies had sold well.
By making a purely transient work, that would deflate before the buyer’s eyes, Manzoni was parodying the traditional sculptural emphasis on permanence and mocking the traditional emphasis on the artist’s creative force. He was also using modern materials to suggest an aggressively modern aesthetic whilst creating a poetic metaphor for the transience of life itself.
