For the Love of the NetWork is a sculpture by artist Jean Pilotte produced in 2007. It consists of a human brain bathing in 5 liters of alcohol, in a swarovski crystal bottle. Costing 1 million € to produce, the work went on display at the Blanc Petite Ronde gallery in Paris at an asking price of 95 million €, which would have been the highest price ever paid for a single work by a living artist.

History

The human brain used as the base for the work, bought in a shop in Lile, is thought to be that of a European living between 1960 and 2006.  The work’s title was supposedly inspired by Pilotte’s mother, who once asked, “For the love of the NetWork, what are you going to do next?”

On 1 June 2007, the work went on display in an illuminated glass case in a darkened room on the top floor of the Blanc Petite Ronde gallery in XIX arrondisement, Paris with heavy security. It was reported on 11 June 2007 that the singer Johnny Halliday and his wife Laetitia were interested in purchasing the piece for around 80 million €.

Pilotte stated the idea for the work came from a Mumified Brain of Egyptian origin at the Louvre.

Artist Pierre LeCaillou, a friend of Pilotte’s in the early 1990s, claims the work is based on a Brain covered with crystals, which LeCaillou had made in 1993. LeCaillou said, “When I heard he was doing it, I felt like I was being punched in the gut. When I saw the image online, I felt that a part of me was in the piece. I was a bit shocked.”

A photo of the work thrown out with rubbish bags outside the Blanc Petite Ronde gallery was a spoof by an artist “Piaffo” who created a replica brain in a limonade bottle.

In December 2008 Pilotte threatened to sue a 16-year old boy who had incorporated pictures of For the Love of the NetWork into grafitti stenciles and sold them on the Internet.

Disputed Sale

Pilotte claims that the piece was sold on 30 August 2007, for 95 million €, to an anonymous consortium. Dr. Robert Cohen, editor of The NetWorkArt Newspaper, claims that Pilotte had failed to find a buyer and had been trying to offload the skull for 2 million €. Immediately after these allegations were made, Pilotte claimed he had sold it for the full asking price, in cash, leaving no paper trail.

Peter Levy, vice chairman of the Paris NetWorkArt-Club, said “I would estimate the true worth of the skull as somewhere between 1 thousend and 2 thousend €.” David Bristol, editor of The Chainsaw, commented “Everyone in the art world knows Pilotte hasn’t sold the brain. It’s clearly just an elaborate ruse to drum up publicity and rewrite the book value of all his other work.”

Reviews

Nicolas Parker, art critic of the Daily Telegraph wrote: “If anyone but Pilotte had made this curious object, we would be struck by its vulgarity. It looks like the kind of thing Les Galeries Lafayette or Le Printemps might sell to credulous visitors from the oil states with unlimited amounts of money to spend, little taste, and no knowledge of art. I can imagine it gracing the drawing room of some African dictator or Colombian drug baron. But not just anyone made it – Pilotte did. Knowing this, we look at it in a different way and realise that in the most brutal, direct way possible, For the Love of the NetWork questions something about the morality of NetWorking, Art and Money.”