1. Congo was a chimpanzee, which lived between 1954 and 1964. It used to paint and create some pretty believable abstract arts, 400 of them in fact. Funnily enough, it was so attached to its work it'd scream if someone tried to take the painting before it is finished.
2. Most people know that Adolf Hitler used to be an aspiring artist, but his dreams were crushed fairly early. What is interesting is that his paintings, which were sold in a Vienna store during the times before WWII, were bought mostly by Jews.
3. There is a way to track fake artworks thanks to the nuclear bomb detonations in 1945. They created new elements, namely strontium and cesium. So, if someone claims that their art piece, or wine bottle, is dated before 1945 and you can find traces of these two elements on it, it is almost certainly a fake.
4. Ever heard of Vincent Van Gogh and his Starry Night painting? He did it while he was in an insane asylum and it clearly shows. It is a turbulent masterpiece, which accurately depicts his persona during this time period.
5. Weird art can be seen anywhere nowadays. Photographer Patrick Hall decided it'll be a cool idea to film people, who get tasered by a stun gun. In slow motion. It is amusing to watch the faces and muscle spasm because you can be sure the "models" agreed to do this on their own free will.
6. Leonardo da Vinci was a strange guy, but then again, most geniuses in the field of art are strange to some extent. Only 15 of his paintings are known to exist, but why? The guy liked to procrastinate a lot and this was only the lesser evil. He was a perfectionist to the bone. To him if the art was not flawless it did not deserve to exist, so he destroyed his lesser works, including his sketchbooks.
7. In Germany there are these interesting places, called art libraries. You can go there and burrow paintings and sculptures from local artists for a small fee, then put them in your property for several months. Cheap advertisement and an even cheaper house decoration, what is not to like.
8. Polish painter, Rafał Bujnowski, painted a photo-realistic self-portrait in black and white, had it photographed and enclosed the picture as his official photo in the U.S.A. visa application form. Eventually, the artist received a passport with a replica of his own painting. Nothing like showing your art skills to the world in such a minimalistic way.
9. He Yunchang is a Chinese artist, who believes that a true art requires suffering. Here are the funnier things he has done:
-Having one of his ribs removed so that he could wear it as a necklace.
-Having a doctor cut a one meter gash down the side of his body, without anesthesia.
-Encasing himself in a cube of quick-setting concrete for 24 hours.
-Trying to “cut a river in half” by suspending himself above it from a crane while holding a knife in the water, as blood dripped from cuts in his arms.
-Painting the fingernails and toenails of 10 mannequins with his own blood.
-Staring at 10,000 watt bulbs to damage his eyesight
-Burning his clothes while wearing them.
10. Tree shaping is a legitimate form of art, which includes shaping up trees into various mundane forms like benches, bridges, fences, tunnels, etc. They can even grow into a house. Well , theoretically at least.
11. During the Paris Olympics in 1900 the winners received valuable pieces of art instead of medals. They must have been more expensive than those little circles the athletes get today too.
12. Video games were officially recognized as an art form in 2012. Woohoo! Playing a game is not that different from reading a book anyway. Way more involved too.
13. Did you know that Mona Lisa used to have eyebrows and eyelashes? That little fact never really captured my attention but here you go, extensive cleaning erased those little black strokes on her face for better or worse.
14. In 2005 a blind experiment was conducted in which artists and an art historian couldn’t differentiate between modern art masterpieces and works by 4-year-olds. An artist described one of the children’s pieces as “a competent execution of abstract expressionism.” This is hilarious and sad at the same time. Yes, the art has evolved, but most of its evolution is towards the mess........I mean the abstract, which honestly doesn't even require that much skill to execute.
15. Artist's Shit was an artwork, created in 1961 by the Italian artist Piero Manzoni. It consisted of 90 cans each containing 30 grams of Manzoni's shit. Nowadays one can is estimated to cost about 100 000 EURO.
16. The Olympic games used to include gold medals in categories such as architecture, city planning, sculpturing and statistics. The founder of modern Olympics himself, Pierre de Coubertin, won the gold medal in literature at the 1912 summer Olympics.
17. There is a Museum of Bad Art(or MOBA), which was established in 1994 in America. It was created because no other place would post the works of those chosen lucky artists. Ouch!
