Bad Modern Art Trivia Quiz

Answer: J.M.W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 -1851) was a fine artist - sometimes. That he was a talented painter is beyond question, but he frequently painted canvases that are just awful. This is not just my opinion; it was the opinion of most of his contemporaries. Turner's work was vigorously defended by the eminent art critic, John Ruskin. This does not mean too much, as Ruskin was nuttier than a fruitcake.

Here is a bit of what Twain had to say about "The Slave Ship" in his book, "A Tramp Abroad": "What a red rag is to a bull, Turner's 'Slave Ship' was to me, before I studied art. Mr. Ruskin is educated in art up to a point where that picture throws him into as mad an ecstasy of pleasure as it used to throw me into one of rage, last year, when I was ignorant. ... A Boston newspaper reporter went and took a look at the Slave Ship floundering about in that fierce conflagration of reds and yellows, and said it reminded him of a tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes. In my then uneducated state, that went home to my non-cultivation, and I thought here is a man with an unobstructed eye." Twain, of course, is making as much (or more) fun of Ruskin as he is of Turner. The inevitable response by the beau monde when someone ridicules a really bad painting by a popular artist is that the person doing the ridiculing is just too much of an ignorant philistine to understand it. It should be pointed out that "The Slave Ship" is not Turner's worst painting; I would give that honor to "Sunrise with Sea Monsters."

Answer: Disumbrationism

Paul Jordan-Smith was a journalist who took offense that some of his artist wife's still life paintings had been panned by critics as "too realistic", so he did what any man would do: grabbing a few tubes of paint and an old brush, he whipped out a painting of a bare-breasted native woman holding something in her hand. According to Jordan-Smith it was supposed to be a starfish, but ended up looking more like a bunch of bananas (here it should be noted that Jordan-Smith had neither artistic training nor natural talent). So he called it "Yes, We Have No Bananas" (after a popular song of the day), and submitted it to the New York Exhibition of the Independents under the name "Pavel Jerdanowitch."

The critics raved about the painting (which was terrible beyond description), and soon the world was clamoring for more work by Pavel Jerdanowitch. So Jordan-Smith kept cranking out paintings, each more awful than the one preceding it. He even invented a biography for Jerdanowitch, stating he had been born in Russia and and had studied at the Chicago Art Institute. He called his style "disumbrationism," because he couldn't figure out how to paint shadows ("umbra" is Latin for shadow). He published fictitious interviews with the equally fictitious Jerdanowitch, in which he expounded on the philosophy of "disumbrationism." And he kept this up for four years, without arousing the suspicions of anyone in the artistic community! One of his paintings, "Aspiration", which showed a black woman doing laundry, was even included in a prestigious reference work, "The Golden Book of Modern Art". In a pamphlet prepared for a 1928 exhibition at Boston's famous Vose Galleries, the artist explained that: "The entire painting affords a marvelous illustration of the law of dynamic symmetry; everything directs the eye of the beholder towards the central symbol, so that at first we are like the washer woman (who stares at the cosmic rooster: this is why the painting is called 'Aspiration') and fail to notice the hand of greed reaching for her purse."

Eventually Jordan-Smith tired of the joke, and confessed to being a fraud. This created something of a cause célčbre in the art world; the critics eventually decided that they had not been fooled at all, and that Jordan-Smith was a natural genius who had actually created great art while attempting to create bad art. It's hard to argue with reasoning like that.

Answer: A rock

It's just a rock. Or, to be more precise, a 340 ton granite boulder. Now, mind you, while Heizer didn't actually do anything to the rock, he did find it, so that alone should be an adequate testament to his artistic genius.

It's not clear how much Heizer pocketed from the deal; most of the costs were involved in transporting the rock some 63 miles from Jurupa Valley to Los Angeles; the rock itself cost "only" $70,000. The rock is mounted on the walls of a 456-foot long concrete trench, and people can walk underneath it.

Some of us without the delicate sensibilities to appreciate the magnitude of this achievement can turn to the experts for enlightenment. For example, Michael Govan, the CEO of the museum, went on record as saying: "To me, it's better than the ancient sculptures because it's not about the power of the gods. It's a monument of our time and of our own place."

Well, Michelangelo moved a lot of big rocks around, too, so there's not that much difference between him and Heizer, except that Michelangelo had such an inflated ego that he actually thought that he could improve upon what nature had already created.

Answer: His excrement

In 1961, Manzoni produced a limited edition of 90 cans of his own excrement called "Merda d'artista." Each of the 90 cans is numbered, and bears a label that says "Artist's ____ Contents 30 gr net Freshly preserved Produced and tinned in May 1961," in English, Italian, French, and German.

Originally sold for the equivalent price of their weight in gold, the cans have appreciated greatly in value, with one selling at auction in 2007 for well over $100,000. Manzoni must have realized he was on to something, because he also sold balloons that he blew up as "Artist's Breath".

Unfortunately, Manzoni died of a heart attack at the age of 29, depriving the world of other potential masterpieces that might have sprung from his creative imagination.

Answer: Signed blank sheets of paper used for prints

Salvador Dali (1904 - 1989) was one of the leading artists of the surrealist movement. During his long career, he created many outstanding works of art, the most famous of which may be his 1931 painting, "The Persistence of Memory". But he was quite eccentric, and often engaged in outrageous publicity stunts aimed at self-promotion, and produced some really lousy stuff as well.

In the 1960s, Dali discovered that he could be paid as much as $40 each for signing blanks sheets of print paper. He could sign one every two seconds, and in a 1985 interview said that he sometimes earned as much as $72,000 an hour doing this. He signed so many blank sheets of print paper that no one even knows how many there were; estimates range from 30,000 to 350,000.

These sheets were supposed to be used to print mass-produced editions of inexpensive prints based on Dali's paintings. But inevitably some of the blank sheets fell into the wrong hands, and were used to make prints that had no connection to Dali whatsoever. Dali admitted in the interview that thousands of "reproductions of works attributed to me that are not mine" were being sold under his signature. Furthermore, the sheer volume of Dali prints that were produced and the fact that his signature changed frequently led to a vast number of faked signatures and unauthorized editions of his work.

In a way, I can't blame him. If someone offered me $40 for my signature, I would sign anything they wanted until I came down with carpal tunnel syndrome. The point is that many collectors are not purchasing art, they're purchasing the artist's autograph. The fact that even the best critics sometimes find it difficult to tell a genuine Dali print from a forgery ought to tell you something.

Answer: Barnett Newman

Barnett Newman seems to have had a burning desire to become an artist. He could not draw very well - his early attempts at portraits look like something your 12 year-old nephew might come up with - but this did not stop him from pursuing his dream. After an early period where he apparently just splashed paint around at random, he came up with the idea of "zips." He would paint a very large canvas some solid color (two colors if he was feeling especially creative), and then paint one or more thin, vertical lines on it. These lines were called "zips", and were somehow seen as a revolutionary breakthrough in the world of art. Or at least they are now; when Newman first exhibited this style of painting, the Museum of Modern Art admits the public response was "muted". But what Newman may have lacked in what most of us would perceive as artistic talent, he more than made up for in his ability to promote himself and his paintings. So he became an important artist after all. Only in America!

One of his most famous works is "Onement VI". This a 102 x 120 inch canvas painted blue with a narrow white strip down the middle of it. That's pretty much it. However, Sotheby's auction house said: "It overwhelms and seduces the viewer with the totality of its sensual, cascading washes of vibrant blue coexisting with Newman's vertical 'Sign' of the human presence, his iconic and revolutionary 'zip'." They sold this painting for $43.8 million in 2013. Not to be outdone, in 2014 Christie's sold another Newman painting, "Black Fire 1", for $84.2 million. This masterpiece consists of a canvas painted black on the left side, with a thin black vertical line on the unpainted right side of the canvas.

The good thing about Barnett Newman paintings is that if you like them, you can buy a roller, a couple of gallons of paint, and some masking tape, and make your own! And nobody (probably not even Newman himself, if he were still alive) will be able to tell them from the real thing. Just don't make the zips too wide.

Answer: A chimpanzee

Pierre Brassau was actually a four year-old chimp from a local zoo. The man behind the joke was a local journalist named Ĺke "Dacke" Axelsson. He supplied "Pierre" (whose real name was Peter) with paints, brushes, and canvases. It took a while for the chimp to learn how to make pictures, because he preferred eating the paint to using it for its intended purpose. He caught on eventually, though, and Axelsson selected his four best paintings, had them framed, and submitted them to the exhibition under the artistic-sounding pseudonym.

One local critic wrote: "Pierre Brassau paints with powerful strokes, but also with clear determination. His brush strokes twist with furious fastidiousness. Pierre is an artist who performs with the delicacy of a ballet dancer." When he was informed that the artist was an ape, the critic still insisted that Pierre's paintings were the best in the show.

Answer: Chicago

The statue is now usually called "Miró's Chicago" or "Miss Chicago". I lived in Chicago for eight years, and it is home to a large amount of public art. Some of it is beautiful, some of it is interesting, and some of it is simply hideous. It is in the latter category that most people would place "Miró's Chicago".

The statue is 39 feet (12 meters) tall, and is made out of bronze, wire mesh, concrete, steel and mosaic tiles. The female figure looks vaguely like a monster from a low-budget science-fiction movie of the 1950s, with a pitchfork growing out of the top of its head. Although Miró donated the design, it cost $500,000 to build, with half the money coming from the city, and the rest from private donors. It stands in a small alcove between the old Brunswick Building and the Methodist Temple on Washington Street, directly across the street from Daley Plaza, with its famous Picasso. The Miró statue is so ugly that there were rumors it was placed between two buildings to keep it out of sight, but this is not true. I think. The statue was unveiled on April 21, 1981.

Answer: A balloon dog

The sculpture, called "Balloon Dog (Orange)", sold at Christie's auction for $58.4 million. It was one of five balloon dog sculptures executed by Mr. Koons, all, of course, in different and presumably very creative colors. Mr. Koons is a former stock and commodities broker, who discovered there is more money in selling bad art to the tasteless rich than there is in dumping junk bonds into retirement portfolios.

When he is not busy sculpting balloon dogs, Mr. Koons keeps the creative juices flowing by floating basketballs in tanks, and enclosing vacuum cleaners in plastic boxes.

In 2011, he attempted to sue a San Francisco bookstore from selling bookends in the shape of balloon dogs, but lost when a judge ruled that balloon dog shapes are pretty much in the realm of public domain. Mr. Koons has apparently broken new ground, in that even some art critics have denounced his work as being completely lacking in merit.

Answer: Jackson Pollock

If copyright laws allowed this to be a photo quiz, I would have concluded with a question about Ellsworth Kelly, perhaps the worst (alleged) artist who has ever lived, but since the English language does not contain words capable of describing the utter hideousness of his work, I decided to ask this instead.

Jackson Pollock, aka "Jack the Dripper", (1912 - 1956) was a talent-less hack, but at least he was an honest one. As he once admitted in an interview, "Do you think I would have painted this crap if I knew how to draw a hand?" Since he could not draw, he became an "action painter", and dripped paint on a canvas. His paintings look like - well, they look like nothing at all, just meaningless splatters of paint, which, of course, was enough to endear him to the cognoscenti.

The documentary, which is both extremely funny and very informative, concerns a woman named Teri Horton, who purchased a painting at a thrift shop in California for $5; she intended to give it to a friend as a gift, but it was too large to hang in her friend's mobile home, so she included it in a yard sale. A local art teacher mentioned that it looked like it could have been the work of Jackson Pollock, whereupon Horton replied, "Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?"

The film is about Horton's attempts to have the painting documented. It is nearly impossible to authentic a Jackson Pollock painting without impeccable provenance, because basically because anyone - you, me, your neighbor's dog - could do what he did. Several experts rejected the painting, but others, including Paul Biro, who claims to have found Pollock's fingerprints on the painting, and Pollock's friend and fellow artist, Nicolas Carone, pronounced it genuine. Who knows?