Chimp's painting fools experts

krunchyfrogg

krunchyfrogg

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http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17606986-13762,00.html

From correspondents in Moritzburg, Saxony
December 19, 2005


A GERMAN art expert was fooled into believing a painting done by a chimpanzee was the work of a master.
The director of the State Art Museum of Moritzburg in Saxony-Anhalt, Katja Schneider, suggested the painting was by the Guggenheim Prize-winning artist Ernst Wilhelm Nay.

"It looks like an Ernst Wilhelm Nay. He was famous for using such blotches of colour," Dr Schneider confidently asserted.

The canvas was actually the work of Banghi, a 31-year-old female chimp at the local zoo.

While Banghi likes to paint, she is not able to build up much of a body of work as her mate Satscho generally destroys her paintings before they can get to the gallery.

But this one survived long enough to give Dr Schneider a red face.

"I did think it looked a bit rushed," she told Bild newspaper.
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After graduating from college with degrees in art, fine art, and working in "the field" for two years, I have come to the conclusion that the art world is a big, smelly, diaper load. A world where the difference between a chimp, and a master artist is negligable.

It sounds like the start of a great joke though...
"Have you heard the one about the art professor and the chimpanzee?"
 


Finster said:
After graduating from college with degrees in art, fine art, and working in "the field" for two years, I have come to the conclusion that the art world is a big, smelly, diaper load. A world where the difference between a chimp, and a master artist is negligable.
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Hm. I have no professional experience to speak of, but perhaps I can see if your experience matches my conclusion...

Every art form has conventions. It seems to me that the "art world" tends to rather arbitrarily define its own conventions withotu reference to what an uneducated person might think. At best, you have to study the conventions in order to understand the piece. At worst, the artist has to tell you directly and separately what they mean for each individual piece. This seems to lead to the point where artists can put whatever they want on the canvas, and claim it means whatever they want, and anyone who doesn't see that just "doesn't get it". With so many different conventions and shyster artists around, is it a wonder that chimps can match masters?

I haven't studied art much at all, but I can see meaning and emotion in works by Da Vinci. But I can't see diddly in "modern art". Da Vinci was working under conventions I, as an uneducated person, can guess at. Modern art doesn't.
 

Umbran said:
I haven't studied art much at all, but I can see meaning and emotion in works by Da Vinci. But I can't see diddly in "modern art". Da Vinci was working under conventions I, as an uneducated person, can guess at. Modern art doesn't.
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Regarding "modern art". Having studied fine arts and art history in screwl Picasso pretty much sums it up for me:

When visiting an exhibition of children's drawings, Piscasso remarked: "When I was their age I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them." (Penrose, Picasso: His Life and Work, 1958, p. 275)
 

Umbran said:
Hm. I have no professional experience to speak of, but perhaps I can see if your experience matches my conclusion...

Every art form has conventions. It seems to me that the "art world" tends to rather arbitrarily define its own conventions withotu reference to what an uneducated person might think. At best, you have to study the conventions in order to understand the piece. At worst, the artist has to tell you directly and separately what they mean for each individual piece. This seems to lead to the point where artists can put whatever they want on the canvas, and claim it means whatever they want, and anyone who doesn't see that just "doesn't get it". With so many different conventions and shyster artists around, is it a wonder that chimps can match masters?

I haven't studied art much at all, but I can see meaning and emotion in works by Da Vinci. But I can't see diddly in "modern art". Da Vinci was working under conventions I, as an uneducated person, can guess at. Modern art doesn't.
Click to expand...

This is so much more eloquent that what I was going to say.

Which, I'm sure, surprises no one.
 

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