Colour Like No Other? Rome, Italy: Artist Graziano Cecchini Unleashes Coloured Balls on the Spanish Steps.
In a stunt that calls to mind the Sony Bravia advertising campaign, “Colour Like No Other” on the hills of San Francisco, artist Graziano Cecchini along with a number of assistants, emptied half a million coloured balls down Rome’s famed Spanish Steps last Wednesday, January 16th, 2008.
Cecchini, who previously dyed the waters of the Trevi Fountain red in October of last year, told Italian interviewers that he uses “art - if we want to call it art - to stress our malaise.”
He added that this latest gesture “was an artistic gesture to demonstrate the problems we have in Italy… Both the Left and the Right are telling us so many lies and I and the Italians have had enough they have broken our balls and hence this live art display.”
The balls bounced down the steps, filling the Barcaccia fountain in the piazza below the steps in a spectacle that stopped passers-by in their tracks. Officials were forced to briefly cordon off the popular tourist spot as police detained Cecchini and three others. Street cleaners later shoveled the balls into garbage trucks and hosed down the stairs to remove strays.
