This column -- the one you are reading right now -- is a work of art.

No, I don't mean the writing is "artistic" and grand and eloquent. I'm not saying it's a master assemblage of prose.

What I mean is that I chose each word carefully and deliberately. Then I arranged these little black hieroglyphics that we call letters upon a computer screen's field of white newsprint just so, until . . . voila! It's a work of art . . . visual art . . . my visual art.

Yes, I heard what some of you contemplating my artwork just said: "Bullshoot!"

I wondered if I should call "bullshoot" on Marina Abramovic when I read in The New York Times about her latest performance art piece, "The Artist Is Present."

According to Times art critic Holland Cotter, Abramovic recently completed "one of the longest pieces of performance art on record, and certainly the one with the largest audience."

Her art? She sat. In a chair. Still. Silent. In the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. For seven hours a day, six days a week. From March 14 through May 31.

No, she wasn't naked. She wore a gown, alternating its solid color from day to day.

Meanwhile, museum visitors were invited to sit, face to face, in a chair about five feet from Abramovic -- and thus become part of the performance.

"Sitting with Ms. Abramovic has been the hot event of the spring art season," Cotter wrote. Some visitors faced the artist for only a few minutes. A few individuals hogged the chair for an entire day, backing up the long line that had formed for the privilege.

Cotter reported that some celebrities, including musicians Bjork, Lou Reed and Rufus Wainwright, and actresses Marisa Tomei and Isabella Rossellini, faced off with the artist.

Predictably, a few of Abramovic's fellow performance artists seized the moment -- and the chair -- to respond with their own various stunts . . . er, art.

So, your call: Is it art? Mere bullshoot? A stunt? A practical joke?

The 63-year-old Yugoslavia native isn't the first to play such a game. I recall one of my art history professors in college relating the tale about the gent who put a frame around an air vent in a museum. He then took credit for "creating" the "art" contained within the frame.

The dada movement, which shook up the art world from 1916 to 1922, reveled in various "anti-art" shenanigans, whether of the conceptual art or performance art variety. Their mission was to call "Bullshoot!" on any and all who presumed to dictate what was and was not art. (Meanwhile, some dadaists insisted it was against the spirit of dada to proclaim any sort of mission at all.)

In 1917, French-American dadaist Marcel Duchamp famously proclaimed a salvaged urinal was art and titled it "Fountain." The Society of Independent Artists, which included Duchamp, rejected the piece from its art show, even though the society had stated it would accept all submissions.

The original "Fountain" was lost, but Duchamp committed the very un-dadaist sin of authorizing a number of replicas in the 1950s and '60s, which are now on display in various museums. One reportedly sold at auction for $1.7 million in 1999.

Predictably, a number of artists have . . . er, committed performance art on various "Fountains," proclaiming that ol' Marcel would have approved using the urinals for their original intent. According to journalist Rob Sharp writing in Britain's Independent, Japanese performance artists Cai and Xi took that route at London's Tate Modern in 2000, with Cai proclaiming, "As Duchamp said himself, it's the artist's choice."

Back in dada's heyday, according to various websites including dadamuseum.com, "A reviewer from American Art News stated that 'the dada philosophy is the sickest, most paralyzing and most destructive thing that has ever originated from the brain of man.' "

The dadaists must have howled with mission-accomplished glee.

And now, right in your own computer screen, you are gazing at an original Rick de Yampert. If my "Arrangement of Letters on Field of White" ever sells at auction for $1.7 million -- or $1.70 -- remember that I want my cut . . . and may the anti-establishment ethic of dada be damned.