Hoax Museum Blog: Art

Fantastic Eggs — Alejandro from Colombia sent in these pictures that are circulating via email with the subject "Huevos Fantasticos" (or "Fantastic Eggs" in English). He asks, "Are these things real?" Well, I'm pretty sure they are real. I think they're examples of carved ostrich eggs. Do a google image search for "carved ostrich egg" and you'll come up with plenty of other examples. However, I don't know who the artist is responsible for these specific carvings.

Monkey Art Fools Expert — Dr. Katja Schneider, director of the State Art Museum in Moritzburg, has been embarrassed by mistaking a painting done by Banghi, a 31-year-old female chimp, for a work by the late Ernst Wilhelm Nay:

The director of the State Art Museum of Moritzburg in Saxony-Anhalt, Katja Schneider, suggested the painting was by the Guggenheim Prize-winning artist Ernst Wilhelm Nay. "It looks like an Ernst Wilhelm Nay. He was famous for using such blotches of colour," Dr Schneider confidently asserted. The canvas was actually the work of Banghi, a 31-year-old female chimp at the local zoo. While Banghi likes to paint, she is not able to build up much of a body of work as her mate Satscho generally destroys her paintings before they can get to the gallery. But this one survived long enough to give Dr Schneider a red face. "I did think it looked a bit rushed," she told Bild newspaper.

Of course, this isn't the first time monkey art has fooled an expert. The classic case occurred in 1964 when newsmen from Sweden's Göteborgs-Tidningen obtained some paintings by Peter, a four-year-old chimp at the Boras zoo. They hung the paintings in a gallery, claiming they were the work of avant-garde artist Pierre Brassau. And soon the works were drawing critical acclaim. One critic wrote: "Brassau paints with powerful strokes, but also with clear determination. His brush strokes twist with furious fastidiousness. Pierre is an artist who performs with the delicacy of a ballet dancer."

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find examples posted online of the art of either Banghi or Pierre Brassau.

Cooling Down With David — Maybe some city really did sponsor the urban art project depicted below. But I doubt it. It definitely looks photoshopped to me. There must be an original David-free version of this picture floating around somewhere.
Update: The fountain is real. It's the Crown Fountain designed by artist Jaume Plensa in Chicago's Millennium Park. But the image of David is fake. The Millennium Park website explains:

The fountain consists of two 50-foot glass block towers at each end of a shallow reflecting pool. The towers project video images from a broad social spectrum of Chicago citizens, a reference to the traditional use of gargoyles in fountains, where faces of mythological beings were sculpted with open mouths to allow water, a symbol of life, to flow out. Plensa adapted this practice by having faces of Chicago citizens projected on LED screens and having water flow through a water outlet in the screen to give the illusion of water spouting from their mouths. The collection of faces, Plensa's tribute to Chicagoans, was taken from a cross-section of 1,000 residents.

In other words, it would be possible to project an image of Michelangelo's David onto the tower, but it doesn't sound as if this has ever been done.

Update: This image comes from a Fark photoshop contest. It was created by a Farker named gigglechick.

The Grafton Portrait of Shakespeare — The National Portrait Gallery has reported that the Grafton portrait, long thought to depict Shakespeare as a young man, doesn't depict him at all. They don't know who the guy in the painting is. The portrait apparently served as the inspiration for the portrayal of Shakespeare in the movie Shakespeare in Love.

So the Grafton portrait will now join the Flower portrait (revealed to be a nineteenth-century fake earlier this year) in the category of "portraits of Shakespeare that don't actually show Shakespeare." My hunch is that all the depictions of Shakespeare are unreliable. We'll never know what he looked like.

MIDI or Virtuoso? — Reverent.org has an interesting quiz that challenges you to tell the difference between music played by a computer and music played by a human virtuoso. Most people will probably find it pretty easy. I, however, scored only 63%. I mistook Rachmaninov for a computer (among other errors).

Holy Grail Found in Da Vinci’s Last Supper — Here's a bit of a mystery. I received an email from someone called Prastil who wrote, "Check this hoax out: DaVinciGrail.com." The site he directed me to claims that the holy grail has finally been discovered in Da Vinci's painting of the Last Supper. For centuries people have wondered why Da Vinci omitted the grail from his painting, given that the grail is one of the central elements of the Last Supper story. Its absence has spawned a variety of theories, such as the one elaborated in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, that the holy grail was Mary Magdalene's uterus (and that the figure to the left of Jesus in the painting is Mary Magdalene). But DaVinciGrail.com claims that Da Vinci actually did include the grail in his painting, if you look hard enough. He concealed it as a symbol on the wall above the head of St. Bartholomew, the disciple at the extreme left. (I highlighted the cup in the image below).

It may seem a bit farfetched that after centuries someone discovered a detail in the Last Supper that no one had ever seen before, but as far as I can tell, that's the case. The man who noticed the grail in the painting was Gary Phillips, a Michigan computer programmer (and cryptologist). He was aided in his discovery by the fact that the painting was recently cleaned, revealing details previously concealed by dirt and grime. Of course, Phillips could be seeing a shape that was not intentionally placed there by Da Vinci, but once you see the cup, it seems so obvious that it's hard to believe it wasn't placed there on purpose. The legitimacy of Phillips's claim to have discovered this hidden detail is noted on a number of sites, such as About.com's Art History blog.

Now here's where things get strange. Phillips has nothing to do with DaVinciGrail.com. Instead, Phillips maintains a separate site called Realm of Twelve. DaVinciGrail.com is registered to (drumroll, please) Prastil, the same guy who emailed me telling me that the site was a hoax. Why did Prastil claim his site was a hoax? Was he trying to get me to write about his site, not thinking that I would check the domain registration? I have no idea (and I wrote about it anyway). But Phillips's discovery of the grail hidden as a symbol on the wall in The Last Supper seems real enough to me... unless there's some part of the story that I'm not clued in to. (Very possible.)

Thieves Steal Fake Paintings — A couple of days ago thieves stole three Edvard Munch paintings from the Hotel Continental in Oslo. But unfortunately for the thieves, all the paintings they stole were fakes. The hotel had the real paintings in a vault. This confirms a pet theory of mine: that most of the time, when you see a famous painting hanging in a museum or gallery, it's a fake. It's simply too risky to hang the priceless originals out in public, either because they could get stolen or damaged. For instance, I'm convinced that the Mona Lisa hanging on display at the Louvre is a fake. Which means that all those tourists who crowd around it are basically wasting their time. They could see a better version of it on a poster in the gift shop. (But having said this I have to admit that when I was in Paris last year I became one of those tourists who trekked through the Louvre just to see the Mona Lisa).

Senior Ceiling Mural Prank — This is pretty cool. Instead of doing a typical obnoxious prank, a senior class in Vermont painted a celestial mural on the ceiling of the main lobby of the school. Normally the rule with pranks is that, to be judged successful, they should annoy, shock, irritate, or poke fun at someone. But I think that surprising people is just as valid a reaction. And what's more surprising than a random act of art?

The class of 2005 painted a large celestial mural on a ceiling in the main lobby of the school during the holiday weekend, Principal Peter Evans said.
Evans said when he returned to school on Tuesday, he looked up at the mural and thought it was an art class project. He soon learned that it was the senior prank, a tradition that usually has a more troublesome impact on the school. About 170 ceiling tiles were painted, he said.
...
"It's beautiful, I think everyone agrees that it's beautiful. We're enjoying it right now, and we don't plan on removing it or eliminating it," Evans said.

Art Cats — Artists work in all different kinds of mediums. Some work in oil. Others in stone. Dave Powell's medium is cats. He breeds cats and then displays them as art in plastic containers. He tries to breed for mutations such as polydactylism. He seems a little sensitive that people won't think his cat-in-a-box displays qualify as art, but he argues that they are since anything created with 'artistic intent' is art. I actually disagree. I think that art is whatever art critics define as art. In other words, it's up to the audience to decide what qualifies as art, not the artist. But as a cat lover, I'm perfectly to happy to regard cats as art.

Cave Art: Banksy Strikes Again — The self-proclaimed 'art terrorist' Banksy made headlines back in March for sneaking his own work into various New York art galleries. Now he's done it again. He managed to sneak some faux prehistoric rock art into the British Museum. The rock art depicted a caveman pushing a shopping trolley. It hung in the British Museum for two days before being detected. The British Museum has now loaned the rock art back to Banksy who is displaying it at his own show in London. But they expect to get it back eventually.

Trompe l’oeil Murals — Some photos of the mural paintings of Eric Grohe have been doing the rounds. The coolest ones, I think, are the ones where people are standing and looking at the paintings, and you can't quite tell if the people are part of the painting or not.

High Heels — More strange images from my inbox. These shoes look like some kind of art project. I don't think it would be possible to walk in them.

Key Scratch Artist — Mark McGowan is an artist, and his canvas is other people's cars. His paintbrush is a key. He goes around town scratching his 'artwork' on random people's cars. At least, that's what he claimed. Now he's admitted the whole thing is a hoax:

An artist who claimed to have vandalised nearly 50 cars in the name of art has admitted it was a stunt. Mark McGowan, 37, said he had taken pictures of himself scratching vehicles' paintwork in Glasgow and London as part of a project. But the London performance artist has since admitted the cars were already "keyed" and the photos were "staged". He said it had been an art project that had gone "horribly wrong" and said he was "very, very sorry".
"I never keyed any cars...the whole thing has just been a nightmare," he added.

I actually think it's a pretty clever idea for a hoax. It's so outrageous, and yet at the same time easy to believe an artist might actually do this. Some of McGowan's other stunts also sound, um, interesting:

In 2003, he used his nose to push a monkey nut seven miles to 10 Downing Street in protest against student debt. He also rolled on pavements for four miles across London singing Christmas carols to highlight the work of office cleaners.

(Thanks to Andrew for the link)

Michelangelo’s Laocoon — It's already well known that Michelangelo dabbled in art forgery. That's not disputed. For instance, there's his famous forgery of the Sleeping Cupid. However, Lynn Catterson of Columbia University thinks that a much more high-profile forgery should be attributed to him. She believes that Michelangelo forged The Laocoon, which has long been regarded as one of the most important pieces of ancient Greek sculpture in existence. She points out that Michelangelo was present when The Laocoon was unearthed in 1506. She has promised to provide further proof to back up her allegation at a lecture today, as well as in a book she's submitted for publication. (thanks to Jelena for the link)

Adventure Art — Some guy (I can't find his name) has put together a huge and fascinating collection of examples of 'adventure art'. Many of the examples he describes are basically elaborate pranks. Some of the stuff is completely insane. Many of the stunts seem to end with the artist's arrest. I haven't had the time to read all of it, but here are a few samples that caught my eye:

• The Austrian artist group produced "Nellanutella" as part of their contribution for the Venice Biennale. The artists threw themselves repeatedly into Venice's canals from café tables, bridges and boats.
• Gordon Matta Clark cut large holes into the walls of Pier 52 on the Hudson River. The work "day's end" resulted in a warrant issued for the artist's arrest and his eventual flight to Europe.
• Doug Fishbone installed a gigantic mountain of bananas - well over a ton of them - in the historic town square in Piotrkow Trybunalski in Poland. The work, which was eaten by the crowd in minutes, was meant as a commentary on greed, globalization, consumerism and violence.

That last guy, Doug Fishbone (the banana artist), actually went to Amherst College with me. We were both in the same year but never hung out together. I haven't seen him since Amherst.

The Carlisle Cursing Stone — In 2001 artist Gordon Young placed a block of sculpted granite in Carlisle's Tullie House Museum. The granite is inscribed with an ancient curse against local highwaymen and robbers. But some people in the city feel that ever since the 'cursing stone' was placed there, bad luck has plagued the city. "Livestock herds around the city on the border with Scotland were wiped out by foot-and-mouth disease, there has been a devastating flood, factories have closed, a boy was murdered in a local bakery and Carlisle United soccer team dropped a league." So now a local politician has introduced a bill to remove the Cursing Stone and have it destroyed, in the belief that this will bring good luck back to Carlisle. The suggestion has sparked quite a bit of controversy, as well as an angry response from the artist. Personally I think that if Carlisle wants to get rid of its bad luck it should stop fooling around with removing stones and go ahead and burn a witch. After all, that seemed to work for Salem. Didn't it?

Batman’s Greatest Boner — A series of scans has appeared on the scans_daily LiveJournal blog, apparently from an early Batman comic (Batman #66). It details a 'boner' made by the Joker, and his subsequent efforts to force Batman 'into a boner'. The word boner is repeated so often that it seems like it has to be a joke, especially when you read lines such as "Gotham City will rue the day it mentioned the word Boner!" Perhaps someone photoshopped the word 'boner' into an issue of Batman. But I don't think so. I think it's real, although I can't be sure since I don't have a copy of that particular Batman comic (in fact, I don't have any Batman comics). The cover of that issue can be seen here. It's titled 'The Joker's Comedy of Errors!' So the issue itself is real, and 'boner' can mean an error. I think that it's only in recent decades that boner has come to predominantly refer to something else.

Another thing... in one of the panels a newspaper headline reads "Wrong-Way Batman! Lawman Aims For California, Winds Up In England!" This is a reference to Wrong-Way Corrigan, an aviator who wanted to fly solo from New York to Dublin but wasn't given permission to do so. So on July 17, 1938 he took off for California and 'accidentally' went the wrong-way and ended up in Ireland.

Child Art Prodigy, Part 2 — Four months ago I posted an entry about Marla Olmstead, a four-year-old child art prodigy whose paintings are selling for thousands of dollars. Tonight I watched a 60 Minutes piece about her, and I've got to say that it was very sad. There seems to be no evidence that Marla is painting these pieces on her own. Her parents claim that she's shy and is unable to paint with anyone but them around (no one but her parents has ever seen her do a painting from start to finish), nor is she able to paint in front of cameras. A hidden camera was installed and what this showed her producing (as her father screamed directions at her from off-camera) was a far cry from the other paintings attributed to her. It seems very likely that her father is the one either entirely creating these paintings, or finishing up what Marla starts. Just watching the father talk, you could tell that he was concealing something by his body language. It's sad that the girl has to be put through this. It'll be interesting to see if people will continue to buy 'her' paintings in light of what 60 Minutes revealed.

Ban On Anime — An email has been going around urging people to sign this petition:

To:  George Bush
Some people are signing against anime and are calling is to be a "perverse, evil, insiduous form of animation from the dark land of Japan, and is corrupting America's youth at unprecedented rates." Anime is NOT corrupting the youth of America, and since when has America become a country of Christians? Isn't there a SEPARATION of Church and State? Isn't this a ban on our Freedom of Speech? And Freedom of Press? What does anime have to do with brainwashing our youth?

Even though I'm not sure what 'signing against anime' is supposed to mean, I do know that there is no movement underfoot by any politician to ban anime. But it's worth scrolling through the messages left by the 4129 people who signed the petition. Some of them are quite amusing.

Duke of Wellington Cone Prank — For almost twenty years Glaswegians have enthusiastically upheld a tradition of placing traffic cones on top of a statue of the Duke of Wellington that stands in the city center. You can even buy postcards and t-shirts displaying a cone-wearing Wellington. But now the fun might come to an end on account of art historian Gary Nisbet who claims that the cone prank threatens to seriously damage the 160-year-old statue. He's campaigning to get people who climb up on the statue charged with vandalism. Unfortunately this would make a number of the city councillors vandals. Nisbet's proposal doesn't seem to be going over well at all with the residents of Glasgow, most of whom seem to think the cone is the best thing about the statue.