A reader of my book wrote to me pointing out that in the book I claim that examples of Paul Jordan Smith's hoax 'Disumbrationist' paintings could be found on my website. But in fact, the paintings weren't there. My fault entirely. At some point, during some reorganization of the website, the page of Disumbrationist Art was deleted and never put back up. So here it is again, restored to its original glory. For those not familiar with the Disumbrationist story, Paul Jordan Smith was a novelist living in LA during the 1920s. As a joke he adopted the persona of a scruffy Russian artist, Pavel Jerdanowitch, and submitted some paintings 'in the modern style' to art contests. Jerdanowitch (i.e. Smith) claimed that his paintings represented the Disumbrationist School of Art. Inevitably Jerdanowitch soon became a darling of the art world, thus proving that art critics are suckers for brooding geniuses with foreign-sounding names.

Posted by m  on  Sat Jan 28, 2006  at  07:09 PM

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