Art-e-Facts: 5 Random Art Facts II
1. Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream was vandalized with lightly scrawled graffiti that reads in Norwegian, “Could only have been painted by a madman.” It is unclear whether it was Munch himself or a visitor at an early exhibit that wrote the words.
2. Vincent van Gogh was not a successful artist during his lifetime and sold only one painting while he was alive. “The Red Vineyard” was sold to impressionist painter Anna Boch for 400 francs a few months before his death.
3. The pencil is a descendant of the ancient Romans who wrote with a thin metal rod called a stylus, which produced a light marking. Other early styluses were made of lead. The core of a pencil is still called the “lead” though it is now made from graphite.
4. Salvador Dali painted “The Persistence of Memory” in 1931 after seeing some Camembert cheese melting in the heat on a hot summer day. Later that night, he dreamt of clocks melting on a landscape. The small work (24 cm x 33 cm) is one of the most famous of the surrealist paintings.
5. The term ‘Art Nouveau’ is French for ‘new art’. The name originated from the Maison de l’Art Nouveau (House of New Art), a gallery opened in 1895 by German art dealer Samuel Bing in Paris. It is also known as Jugendstil – German for ‘youth style’, and named after the magazine Jugend that was founded in 1896 by Georg Hirth.
Related Books:
The Art Lover’s Almanac : Serious Trivia for the Novice and the Connoisseur
Facts On File Encyclopedia Of Art ( 5 vol. set)
Sources: NY Times, Van Gogh Gallery, Pencils.com, MOMA, Wikipedia
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