Pickle people, rejoice! An Australian artist is selling a McDonald’s pickle “sculpture” for $10,000 NZD ($6,150 USD).
Currently flung onto the ceiling of The Michael Lett Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand, the aptly-named Pickle was removed from one of the fast food chain’s cheeseburgers (which normally sell for $1.81) and installed in early July by artist Matthew Griffin…
…who wanted to relish in the opportunity for a massive ROI, I suppose.
“A humorous response to the work is not invalid—it’s OK because it is funny,” Griffin’s rep, Ryan Moore, told The Guardian.
Believing that Griffin’s creation raises important questions around the ways in which artistic merit is created and defined, he continued: “Generally speaking, artists aren’t the ones deciding whether something is art or not—they are the ones who make and do things. Whether something is valuable and meaningful as artwork is the way that we collectively, as a society choose to use it or talk about it,
“As much as this looks like a pickle attached to the ceiling—and there is no artifice there, that is exactly what it is—there is something in the encounter with that as a sculpture or a sculptural gesture.”
For $6,000, you could showcase the Pickle in your own home
As is customary of any piece of gallery artwork, Pickle’s plaque lists the materials used to create the piece, as well. Including all of the cheeseburger components that aren’t on display (bun, beef patty, cheese, et al) and their respective ingredients (antioxidant 300, enzymes contain wheat, and emulsifiers 472e and 471 being particular favorites).
If Pickle is, indeed sold, the buyer will be provided with instructions on how to recreate the piece at home, but will not receive the pickle that has been clinging on to the gallery’s ceiling—by nothing more than burger juices and ketchup—for weeks already.
“The gesture is so pure, so joyful. That is what makes it so good,” Moore continued.
And with art critics now weighing in with high-brow takes on this low-cost topping, he’s not wrong—this Pickle is kind of a big dill.