The somewhat unlikely source of his inspiration was a circular
pissoir bedecked with advertisements.
When this was explained, an elderly gentleman wearing the Free France lapel badge of the Resistance took me into a
pissoir.
Meanwhile the protected
pissoir at Vyse Street, Hockley, proudly proclaims itself as The Temple of Relief and is listed by English Heritage for special architectural and historic interest.
We still think of ourselves as Anglo-Saxons and imagine that it gives us the right to take the
pissoir out of our cousins across the Channel.
It is therefore fitting that this exhibition will be staged in a factory building whose conversion in the 1980s to a center for contemporary art radically altered Geneva's greater Plainpalais district, Bronstein's exhibition will additionally comprise a selection of his videos and a pair of architectural models, which, like
Pissoir, the neoclassical urinal that he created for Copenhagen's Kunsthal Charlottenborg in 2011, promise to mock historic prototypes with devilish aplomb.
Highlights will be toilet humour from a
pissoir with sound effects, the Bristol Harbour Festival (July 27-28), talks with a Victorian crew and experiencing life in the ship's first-class dining room.
Answers: 1 Miss Marple; 2 Dan Conner; 3 Sarah Harding; 4 Stephen Tomkinson; 5 Chicago Blues; 6 Jason Clarke; 7 Peter Guinness; 8 All You Need Is (Big) Love; 9 Emilia Clarke; 10 Fairly Legal; 11 San Francisco; 12 Mary Tyler Moore; 13 Polly; 14 Strangeways; 15 Cathy McGowan; 16 Emmerdale; 17 The Big Valley; 18 King's College Hospital; 19 The Monocled Mutineer; 20 Desperate Housewives; 21 Adam Cartwright; 22 Christine Bleakley; 23 The Bounder; 24 Dr David Southall; 25 Michael * Denison; 26 The * Country House Revealed; 27 The Cheaters; 28 The Cisco Kid; 29 Peter Ustinov; 30 Plans to install a new
pissoir.
Two Network Rail staff attended in the time I was there: a young cleaning woman (who very efficiently removed my handwritten sign redirecting would-be users to an alternative
pissoir) and a uniformed official who arrived to give the doors a rattle and reassure himself that both were still securely locked and, therefore, unavailable to the travelling public.
Johansson pushes the boundaries of purpose and function and when I left the gallery and I quietly, with a smile, reflected on the awkward absurdity of a standing Feminoir which is a self-made term constructed by combining the words
pissoir and feminine translated to be understood as a 'urinal for women'.
Like him, the men were blind to me, taking turns at the
pissoir.
The Duchamp Fountain attacked with a hammer last month at the Dada exhibition in Paris was not the original
pissoir, but a hand-crafted facsimile.
In 1864, as part of his modernisation of Paris, Georges-Eugene Haussmann introduced the
pissoir. The effect was an entire remaking of the nature of the street.