Free Republic

The conceptual artist Mark Wallinger, otherwise known as the Dancing Bear, has won the £25,000 Turner Prize for his monumental political work, State Britain, a recreation of the one-man Parliament Square anti-Iraq war protest destroyed by Tony Blair's government. The installation, which was shown at Tate Britain at the start of the year, was Wallinger's 40-metre long replica, complete with banners and tarpaulin shelter, of the mini-peace camp run by Brian Haw opposite the Houses of Parliament from June, 2001, until it was demolished by the police in May, 2006, under new powers banning protests within one kilometre of the...

LONDON - A porcelain urinal is the most influential work of modern art, according to a survey released Wednesday. The poll of 500 arts figures ranked French surrealist Marcel Duchamp's 1917 piece "Fountain" — an ordinary white, porcelain urinal — more influential than Pablo Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," Andy Warhol's screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and "Guernica," Picasso's searing depiction of the devastation of war. Duchamp pioneered the use of everyday objects as art, an aesthetic that questioned the nature of art itself. Art expert Simon Wilson said the choice of Duchamp's urinal "comes as a bit of a shock."...

A proposal to build a landmark piece of sculpture sparks a debate over artistic taste and the city's identity. SPIRIT OF THE SEAS: Five killer whales pull Neptune in artist's conception of a 50-million-dollar civic fountain on San Diego's waterfront. The city's artistic community and residents are divided over the merits of the proposed sculpture. COURTESY OF A. WASIL SAN DIEGO - Considering that they're a creative bunch to begin with, it's perhaps no surprise that the art crowd in America's seventh-largest city has come up with plenty of ways to describe a proposed $50 million civic fountain. The real...