Art Trivia — Did You Know?Did you know? The world's largest art gallery is the Winter Palace and Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. Visitors would have to walk 15 miles to see the 322 galleries which house nearly 3 million works of art. (What a legacy to the art world!)
Did you know? The ancient occupation of the “Gold Beater” was one who flattened out gold nuggets by hammering them in between the outside membrane of the large intestine from an ox (known as goldbeater skin) to produce the gold leaf used in decorative gilding. The adhesive used to attach this metal to paper or plaster, in ancient times and still today, is... egg whites. (The historical roots of many crafts makes for some interesting reading…)
Did you know? “Going through the grits” is not a reference to eating breakfast in Georgia! It refers to the process of sanding a workpiece where a woodworker uses progressively finer pieces of sandpaper to get a smooth finish. By going through the grits each progressive piece of sandpaper removes the scratches from the previous piece. (Ah yes… the crafters’ lingo…)
Did you know? More than 100 years ago, the felt hat makers of England used mercury to stabilize wool. Most of them eventually became poisoned by the fumes, as demonstrated by the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Breathing mercury's fumes over a long period of time will cause erethism, a disorder characterized by nervousness, irritability, and strange personality changes. (The process of art and craft has come along way… fortunately.)
Did you know? In 1961, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City hung Matisse's 'Le Bateau' upside-down for 47 days before an art student noticed the error. Apparently none of the over 116,000 visitors seem to have noticed. (Oops...)
Did you know? The Eiffel Tower receives a fresh coat of 300 tons of reddish-green paint every seven years. (Much better to be an artist than one of the tower’s painters…chuckle, chuckle…)
More Mona Lisa Facts —
Did you know? The Mona Lisa measures less than 2 feet by 2 feet? (Some paintings tend to take on a larger than life impression in our minds)
Did you Know? The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Renaissance Florence to shave them off.
Did You Know? The Mona Lisa was once bought by Francis I of France in 1517 to hang in a bathroom. (Of all places…)
Did You Know? X-rays of the Mona Lisa show that there are actually three completely different versions of the same subject, all painted by Leonardo, under the final portrait. (If at first you don't succeed, try, try again...I'm convinced that artists are not only “driven” and some are seemingly never satisfied, but all of them have incredible patience and persistence...something we all can use more of.)
Did You Know? Leonardo Da Vinci never signed or dated his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa. (And yet if there’s one painting more than any other in the world that everyone knows who the artist is, it’s this one.)
Did You Know? On August 21st, 1911, a janitor stole the Mona Lisa, the most famous painting in the world, from the Louvre Museum. It was recovered two years later. It turns out, the janitor who cleaned the floor in front of the painting for years, had fallen in love with her, and the way she looked at him, so he took her home just to have her nearer by. But two years later his conscience caught up with him and he returned it. (Ah… the power of love…)
A Bit of the Absurd and Bizarre... Or Amuzing Art?
From the seemingly ridiculous like the Mona Lisa created out of toast, to a portrait of Emperor Chin Shih Huang Ti made out of laundry lint, to Vincent Van Gogh's portrait rendered from 3000 post cards of Van Gogh paintings — Is it all true or false?? Urban legend or art? Exploited materializm or mockery? We present it for your amusement.
Did you know? In 1983, a Japanese artist made a copy of the Mona Lisa entirely out of 1426 tiny pieces of ordinary toast.
Did you know? The gigantic portrait, “Self Portrait In Front Of Easel, 1888,” entitled Study For Portrait of Van Gogh© was created by Cornel Biereng of Amsterdam from 3,000 postcards depicting 115 different Van Gogh paintings and drawings! Commissioned by the Netherlands Bureau of Tourism to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Van Gogh’s death in 1990, the 26 ft. tall by 20 ft. wide mural toured several cities throughout the world, including Paris, Berlin, Chicago and Toronto, as part of an extensive exhibition of Van Gogh’s paintings before being acquired by Ripley’s in 1992.
Did you know? On April 12th, 1994, an artist from Chicago named Dwight Kalb created a statue of Madonna carved out of 180 pounds of ham and sent it to David Letterman.
Did you know? English artist Andy Brown, created a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II of Britain by stitching together 1,000 used tea bags. (They do love their tea in Britain...)
Did you know? A Flemish artist is responsible for the world's smallest painting in history. It is a picture of a miller and his mill, and it was painted onto a single grain of corn. (Can you imagine the challenge!)
Did you know? French artist, Michel Vienkot and Bernd Eilts, a German artist, have something in common. Believe it or not it's “cow dung”. Vienkot uses cow dung as paint when he creates his pictures. Eilts has a unique craft – he turns dried cow manure into wall clocks and small sculptures. He is now expanding his business to include cow dung wrist watches and alarm clocks.
The work, in fact, IS REAL, and is the product of artist, Tadahiko Ogawa of Kyoto, Japan. Ogawa created this “edible work” by etching the picture on aluminum foil, wrapping each piece of toast in a section of foil, cutting out the design, then toasting it in a horizontal toaster.
The “Mona in Toast” does not always bend to the forces of ridicule, however. In an on-line edition of the Japan Times dated 1997, it is reported that a Mona Lisa whose image is burnt into slices of toast is displayed in an exhibit on “Food As Art” that was put up by the Tempozan Contemporary Museum. Given the above, it’s not surprising, therefore, that the permanent home of this work is the Orlando, Florida, exhibition hall of Ripley's Believe It Or Not! What is the difference, one might ask, in accepting such an object as a serious or valid work of art and exposing it as a “useless” curiosity? Depending upon one's point of view, this may either be a product of wasted time or one of certain ingenuity and verifiable industry. In this age when it is so easy to admit that cuisine can be aesthetic and hard to comprehend how art can be eaten, it’s interesting to note that the “Mona in Toast” looks surprisingly like a typical Leonardo brown ink drawing, squared off for transfer.
* We’d like to thank all those whose did the research and discovered these amusing details of the lives of infamous artists. We’ve only gleaned these from readily available public information. Anything listed above is for your informative amusement and pleasure. We cannot vouch for its authenticity though we do believe that it all comes from knowledgeable and reliable sources.
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