What has happened to the last Hildegard Schneiper? (Short interview with the Swiss artist about art robbery in Switzerland)

As we all know, Hildegard has left two of her works at Art Rotterdam. One of them now is part of the precious collection of a Swiss Kunsthaus. The other one was left (by Schneiper herself) as a 'present' for the readers of this blog. Yet, no one has found it. What has happened to this soap? For all of you, I talked to Hildegard Schneiper herself.

Me: "Hildegard, please tell us, what has happened to your piece of soap?"
Schneiper: "Oh, NEIN, yuk.... Please, don't call it soap. It is a piece of art. You can call it 'artpiece'. That won't hurt..."

Me: "Then: what has happened to your artpiece?"
Hildegard: "Keine Ahnung. I have no idea. Aucun idée. Ich weiss's nicht!
Probably the cleaner has thrown it away. It's something that happens to the very best pieces of art. Everybody remembers the ashtray, an excellent piece of art by Damien Hirst. On a day in October, 2001, it was thrown away by the art gallery cleaner.
Actually, I would be really proud if the cleaners of Art Rotterdam would have thrown my artpiece away. It would increase the beauty of the artpiece, as well as the value of my other work. Everybody knows that Damien Hirst has become a very rich man ever since his ashtray has been thrown away!"

Me: "Any other theories?"
Schneiper: "Maybe my artpiece was subject to art robbery. It might have been taken by someone that shouldn't have taken it. Actually, I feel quite violated about that possibilty. But also, everybody knows that it is part of reality that valuable artpieces get stolen. Thieves even use violence in order to acquire pieces for their art-collection. We have seen it happening at the beginning of this week in the beautiful city of Zürich: a serious art robbery has been taken place. The thieves used guns. It was worldnews number one, last monday."

Me: "What are you going to do now?"
Hildegard: "In the future I hope to be able to produce mini-paintings, which are really easy to steal. I hate it when people use violence in order to acquire art. I can not live with the idea that a guard might be traumatized by the point of a pistol, due to someone who wants to steal a Hildegard Schneiper Artpiece. Right here, at this very moment, I want to summon all artists to make small, easy-to-steal artworks. You don't need to make big pieces of art to generate a huge impact anyway! A very tiny kleines artpiece might change the meaning of a huge building like the palace of the former Romanian dictator Ceaucescu."


Big piece of something that is probably not art, but a piece of advertisement.

Hildegard: "It was standing on top of a museum in Belgium. The artist wanted to use the museum as a column for his piece, which is a giant bottle of ketchup. The ketchup represents American culture. Both overflow the whole world and make everything taste similar. The Bevölkerung of the town got itchy by the view of the big inflatable bottle. Also, it catched too much wind. It got dangerous! So, they put it inside this hall.
I'd be more impressed if the artist had made a small, hardly visible Barbie-sized inflatable bottle of ketchup. It is really hard to make tiny, inflatable things. I am sure that no one would have noticed it than, but his idea would still remain."



Example of very small artpiece.

Hildegard: "This one generates loads of impact, even while you don't see any blood or ketchup."














Ceaucescu's palace in Bukarest, Romania.

"It is a big, big building. It is so big, that you can not understand how big it is. Doors are big, windows are big,, rooms are big... If Ceaucescu would have put some small doors in his building, or some of my small artworks, the building would probably appear much bigger. Ceaucescu war ein Arsloch who didn't understand these rules of art and nature."