Le Bateau (“The Boat”) by Henri Matisse, caused a minor stir when the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which housed it, hung the work upside-down for 47 days in 1961 until Genevieve Habert, a stockbroker, noticed the mistake and notified a guard.
modern art
Chinese artist He Yunchang believes in suffering for his art…
Chinese artist He Yunchang believes in suffering for his art. His performance pieces have included:
- 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.
In 2005 a blind experiment was conducted …
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.” Here is Willem de Kooning’s “A tree in Naples” which is mentioned in the article.