Interesting Facts

According to a poll conducted by magazine Terre de Vins (Wine Country), most French people don't know much about wine. (71% of people surveyed said that they didn't know much about wine, of these 43% admitted to knowing nothing at all. Only 3% thought they were well versed in the subject, whilst 26% said they "knew enough." For me, wine is like art, I know what I like.)

According to a Freedom of Information request from the Evening Standard newspaper a committee of British MPs has spent around £250,000 since 1995 commissioning portraits and statues of other MPs. (Now no one would really begrudge Sir Winston a statue or two, and even a prime minister like Mrs T should have her photo taken for the wall of infamy, but pictures and statues have also been commissioned for junior ministers and backbenchers. Frank Doran, Labour MP and chairman of the Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art said, "We've been collecting art in the House of Commons, and Parliament generally, since the 14th century.  We're preserving the history of Parliament through art. We're also doing a number of other things as part of that process: one is supporting young artists.")

The estimated value of art owned by councils across the UK is £4 billion. (For example; A Lowry painting that Derby museum bought for £42 is now worth an estimated £1m.  Of course they are now under pressure to sell it.) 

A sketch, bought at a jumble sale in Los Angeles for $5, could be worth over $2 million. (The sketch is thought to be by a young Andy Warhol, and probably created when he was just 10 or 11 years old, is up for sale on eBay for a whopping $1.9 million.   This news has probably prompted parents all over the world to suddenly start storing their little treasure's scribbles.)

The iconic artwork The Scream, created by Norwegian expressionist artist Edvard Munch, has sold for just under $120m (£74m). (This makes it the most expensive art work ever sold at auction, the previous record was for Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust, which sold for $106.5m in 2010. There are actually 4 versions of this pastel (yes it's no oil painting), but this is the only one owned privately, and it bears a poem written by the artist on the frame. The poem reads: "I was walking along a path with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city. "My friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature." If anyone had been nearby when I heard how much this piece of paper had sold for, they would have heard a scream passing through my ho...

According to the BBC News website, Damien Hirst has produced 1,000 spot paintings. (Spot paintings are "rows of randomly coloured circles. Interestingly Last year, one of his spot paintings - of which there are over 1,000 - sold for £1.8m. Hirst has admitted that he only painted five spot paintings himself because, "I couldn't be ******* ***** doing it"; he described his efforts as "shite"—"They're shit compared to ... the best person who ever painted spots for me was Rachel. She's brilliant. Absolutely ******* brilliant. The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel." Hirst sees the real creative act as being the conception, not the execution, and that, as the progenitor of the idea, he is therefore the artist. Maybe, Mr Hirst, or maybe the real artist is the wallpaper company who first printed spotty wallpaper. It looks as if the bubble is about to burst though, like the story, The Emperor's New Cloth...

New York artist Ron Piccirillo says that several animals can be seen hidden in the Mona Lisa when it is viewed horizontally. (According to Mr Piccirillo, a lion, an ape and a buffalo can be seen around Mona Lisa’s head and a snake or crocodile is near her right shoulder.  I wonder what he was smoking when he saw them.) Source

A neon artwork sign by British artist Tracey Emin has been installed inside Prime Minister David Cameron's official residence. (The sign reads, "More Passion". I wonder if his wife asked her to put it up in the bedroom?)

According to Pascal Cotte, a Parisian engineer, Mona Lisa once had eyebrows and eyelashes. (He dedicated around 3,000 hours to examining Leonardo Da Vinci's famous portrait and says that years of restoration work have eroded the facial hair. Using 240-megapixel scans, Mr Cotte, 49, says he can see traces of a left eyebrow long obscured from the naked eye by the efforts of the restorers. I wouldn't want my face examined on a 240-megapixel scan!  They'll be saying she had a moustache and beard next. Please, gentlemen, let us ladies have our little depilatory secrets.) 

If you look at the Mona Lisa carefully, you'll see she doesn't have any facial hair. (Now I don't mean just facial beardy / moustachy hair, I mean she doesn't have any eyebrows or eyelashes!  I hadn't even realised this until Pure Moon pointed it out on the forum!  Some people say it was normal in those days to pluck out facial hair, but ... there's another theory - see next post.)

The full name of world famous artist Pablo Picasso is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisma Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. (I wonder how long it took for his parents to think them up?!  xx)

A black and white painting of a big bottle of Coca Cola has sold for 35.3 million dollars at Sotheby's New York contemporary art auction. (Why? Well because,"Large Coca Cola", was painted by Andy Warhol and the extravagant price might have something to do with this article in Time magazine on how the banks are buying up contemporary art (banks have always been able to convince us that worthless pieces of paper are valuable). The head of contemporary art at Sotheby's described Warhol as "an icon of global desire." Each to his own, but as far as icons go, Warhol is way below Wallace and Gromit for me.)

The newly designed British passport will feature brand new art work. (Some of the images will be scenes that represent the four nations, including The White Cliffs of Dover, the Gower Peninsula, Ben Nevis and the Giant’s Causeway. There will also be symbols of the UK's maritime heritage and the British obsession with the weather, as meteorological symbols appear on many pages. It's typical, I renew my passport and then they redesign it!)

The world's oldest example of abstract art, dates back more than 70,000 years. (It was found, on two pieces of ochre, in a cave called Blombos Cave in South Africa. Picasso eat your heart out.)

Archeologists working on a dig in the southern German province of Swabia have unearthed what they claim to be the oldest statue in the history of art. (The artifacts, found in a cave, date back between 30,000 and 33,000 years, to a time when some of modern humans' earliest relatives populated the European continent. They depict a lion-man, a water bird and a horse.)

Artist John Pasche, who designed the iconic Rolling Stones lips logo, was paid just £50 for the job... although he received a £200 bonus later. (The original artwork has been bought by London's Victoria and Albert Museum for $92,500 (£51,375). Luckily it was sold by Mr Pasche, so at least he's benefited from his own work.)