Statue made from Giant Panda dung sells for 300,000 yuan
A 24-inch high replica of the Venus de Milo, sculpted from giant panda dung, has sold for £30,000 to a prominent Swiss art collector.
A Venus statue that is made of panda faeces. The statue is currently on display at a charity exhibition at the Zhengzhou Art Museum in Henan province Photo: AP/CATERS
By Malcolm Moore, in Shanghai 8:21AM GMT 02 Dec 2010
Zhu Cheng, a Chinese sculptor, created the statue with the help of nine 11 year-old art students in the central Chinese city of Chengdu, the home of a giant panda breeding centre. According to the Henan Business Daily newspaper, it has already been purchased by Uli Sigg, a Swiss businessman who owns the world's largest collection of contemporary Chinese art, for 300,000 yuan.
Mr Sigg, who was formerly the Swiss ambassador to China, told the Henan Business Daily that he thought the statue was "full of creativity and innovation". "We made the statue in October," said Mr Zhu. "We took a clay mould of the statue and then pasted panda dung onto it using vegetable glue," he added. "I have been thinking about using panda dung in my work for years. After all, pandas are China's national treasure, so anything relating to them is interesting.
"It was quite hard to get hold of the dung, however. The first time I applied they declined, and I had to write a letter explaining what I was going to do with it." The statue is currently on display at a charity exhibition at the Zhengzhou Art Museum in Henan province, where it has drawn large crowds.
Items crafted out of dried panda dung, which is said to have a relatively neutral smell because of the panda's all-bamboo diet, have been sold at the gift shop of the Chengdu Research Centre for Giant Panda Breeding since 2007. The shop said its panda dung paper and small pots were particularly popular.
Huang Xiangming, a spokesman, said the centre used to pay 5,000 yuan to 8,000 yuan a month to dispose of the waste, but was now using it to generate revenue. Adult pandas produce around 45lbs of dung a day. China currently has 312 giant pandas in captivity, with 31 successful births this year.
Mr Sigg has been collecting Chinese art since 1985 and is said to be the only collector who has witnessed the whole development of the Chinese contemporary art world since its infancy. Wang Weiwei, who coordinates the China Contemporary Art Award, which was set up by Mr Sigg in 1997, said the collector had a number of agents buying up Chinese art for him.
The original Venus de Milo is one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture and was created at some point between 130BC and 100BC out of marble. From an inscription on its plinth, it is thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch but was earlier mistakenly attributed to the master sculptor Praxiteles. It is presently on display at the Louvre in Paris.
