Chimp Painters Fool Art Critics?
Ragnar (no, not THE Ragnar)
CNN about an elephant "painting" that was sold for big bucks to some
crap-for-brains collector. It would not surprise me in the least of the
chimp thing was true.
Keith Littleton
friends drank beer and watch LSU get beat again.
(This time it was by only 1 point!!).
The story was about a scientist who had some chimps
in his lab and he trained them to do abstract painings.
It got to the point that the chimps were doing some
rather original paintings, so he took some to a
gallery and told the onwer that a (human) "friend"
of his painted them. Anyway, the piantings proved
very popular and were highly praised by some critics
as fine works of abstract art. They not only sold,
but the people complimented the "painter" as being
very talented person.
This sounds too good to be true. It sounds like a
classic urban legend.
I am right in believing this to be an urban legend?
What, if any truth, is behind this tale?
Yours,
Keith Littleton
litt...@vnet.net
New Orleans, LA
"No. But when we crave power over life(endless
wealth, unassailable safety, immortality,)then
desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies
itself to that greed, then comes evil. ..."
Sparrowhawk in "The Farthest Shore"
- Ursula K. LeGuin
Harry MF Teasley
> The story was about a scientist who had some chimps
> in his lab and he trained them to do abstract painings.
<...>
> What, if any truth, is behind this tale?
Ruby, an elephant at the Phoenix Zoo, gets 2-3 grand per canvas. Chimps
doing paintings commercially is not only possible, but I would hazard
highly likely. Anyone passing chimp paintings off as ones done by an
unknown human is likely screwing themselves out of more sales and higher
prices.
Which makes the story you heard little more than an attempt to make a
labored and obvious joke about the art world. Whee.
Harry "How many artists does it take to screw in a light bulb? None,
that's a craft, it's not art." Teasley
--
"Life is truly a rich tapestry of incompetent business dealings and
psychotic quasi-fascist politicians." -BW
Visit the AFU archives at www.urbanlegends.com
Henrik Schmidt
>
> There is a story that was told while me and some
> friends drank beer and watch LSU get beat again.
> (This time it was by only 1 point!!).
>
> in his lab and he trained them to do abstract painings.
> rather original paintings, so he took some to a
> gallery and told the onwer that a (human) "friend"
> of his painted them. Anyway, the piantings proved
> very popular and were highly praised by some critics
> as fine works of abstract art. They not only sold,
> but the people complimented the "painter" as being
> very talented person.
A chimp, no idea, but last year a man sent in a few small paintings to
one of the major censored[1] art exhibit here in Copenhagen, and had
most of them accepted. Imagine the scandal when it was revealed that the
artist was the man's 5 year old son.
Assigning some fancy-schmancy sounding names to the works seems to have
helped them along in the selection process.
--
Henrik Schmidt
[1] As in "you must meet certain quality criteria", not "no smut please"
--
"Mens sibi conscia recti"
Remove DAMN.SPAM. from my address to reply
Bill Schnakenberg
>
> There is a story that was told while me and some
> friends drank beer and watch LSU get beat again.
> (This time it was by only 1 point!!).
>
> The story was about a scientist who had some chimps
> in his lab and he trained them to do abstract painings.
> It got to the point that the chimps were doing some
> rather original paintings, so he took some to a
> gallery and told the onwer that a (human) "friend"
> of his painted them. Anyway, the piantings proved
> very popular and were highly praised by some critics
> as fine works of abstract art. They not only sold,
> but the people complimented the "painter" as being
> very talented person.
>
> classic urban legend.
>
> I am right in believing this to be an urban legend?
>
It was done as far as I can remember, and yes, the paintings were highly
praised by some critics. This is not surprising, however, if you consider
some of the modern *art* hanging in the museums today could have been done
by any species of animal and would be praised by art critics.
Bill "But he doesn't have any clothes on" Schnakenberg
Caren Weiner Campbell
>
> Keith Littleton <litt...@katie.vnet.net> wrote:
>
> > The story was about a scientist who had some chimps
> > in his lab and he trained them to do abstract painings.
> > What, if any truth, is behind this tale?
>
> doing paintings commercially is not only possible, but I would hazard
> highly likely.
Not chimps, exactly, but gorilla painters can be found here:
http://www.koko.org/koko/gorilla_art/index.html
A partial quote from the site:
>Through their paintings, Koko and Michael offer an unprecedented glimpse
>of the joys, frustrations and desires that they encounter in daily life.
>Their collection of acrylics on canvas include intriguing examples of
>these visual and emotional representations.
>While Koko and Michael continue to paint - their most recent works were
>recently on exhibit - Michael is now very interested in sounds and rhythms.
You might say they're Fauvists.
--Carrie "everything went fine until the 800-pound gorilla lost his tempera"
Weiner Campbell
Walter Eric Johnson
: There is a story that was told while me and some
: friends drank beer and watch LSU get beat again.
: (This time it was by only 1 point!!).
: The story was about a scientist who had some chimps
: in his lab and he trained them to do abstract painings.
: gallery and told the onwer that a (human) "friend"
: of his painted them. Anyway, the piantings proved
: very popular and were highly praised by some critics
: as fine works of abstract art. They not only sold,
: but the people complimented the "painter" as being
: very talented person.
:
: This sounds too good to be true. It sounds like a
: classic urban legend.
Actually, it could have come from the Beverly
Hillbillies. In one episode, they had a chimp
doing paintings and it won an art show.
Eric Johnson
Doug Yanega
<litt...@katie.vnet.net> wrote:
> There is a story that was told while me and some
> friends drank beer and watch LSU get beat again.
> (This time it was by only 1 point!!).
>
> The story was about a scientist who had some chimps
> in his lab and he trained them to do abstract painings.
> It got to the point that the chimps were doing some
> rather original paintings, so he took some to a
> gallery and told the onwer that a (human) "friend"
> of his painted them. Anyway, the piantings proved
> very popular and were highly praised by some critics
> as fine works of abstract art. They not only sold,
> but the people complimented the "painter" as being
> very talented person.
>
> This sounds too good to be true. It sounds like a
> classic urban legend.
>
> I am right in believing this to be an urban legend?
>
> What, if any truth, is behind this tale?
The truth is that Desmond Morris, famed author of "The Naked Ape" raised a
chimp named Bongo as part of the family, and Bongo demonstrated a love of
painting. Morris displayed the paintings - always indicating who had
painted them - in an attempt to show people that humans were not the only
ape species that had a sense of aesthetics. This reached its peak at a
full-blown art show at a major museum (IIRC in New York) in the 1960's,
but no attempt was made to conceal the artist's identity. There was, as
one might expect, public outrage at the audacity of the people sponsoring
the show to even SUGGEST that a chimp could produce *art*. Later on,
friends urged Morris to sell the paintings, which I believe he did, but
never for truly outrageous amounts - though they were apparently REsold at
such prices. The only detail I'm fuzzy on there is the situation
surrounding the sales of Bongo's paintings, but the rest is straight out
of Morris' autobiography.
Amazing how the story got so mangled in the transition to UL.
Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology
Entomology Research Museum Univ. of California
Riverside, CA 92521 909-787-4315 (opinions are mine, not UCR's)
Straight Dope Scientific Advisory Board
http://insects.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is
the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Richard Brandt
>
> The story was about a scientist who had some chimps
> in his lab and he trained them to do abstract painings.
> It got to the point that the chimps were doing some
> rather original paintings, so he took some to a
> gallery and told the onwer that a (human) "friend"
> of his painted them. Anyway, the piantings proved
> very popular and were highly praised by some critics
> as fine works of abstract art. They not only sold,
> but the people complimented the "painter" as being
> very talented person.
Koko the gorilla paints. What's most interesting is that the
works are not abstract, but representational. Koko is able
to paint pictures of what she sees around her.
New URL: http://www.koko.org/koko/gorilla_art/index.html
Richard "Magilla" Brandt
--
==== Richard Brandt is at http://www.spaceports.com/~rsbrandt ====
"Microsoft called that a feature. We told them to fix it."
--Broadcast.com President Mark Cuban on run-on in Media Player
Claude Kuhnen
back but in that version everybody knew about the "artist"
but they bought the paintings anyway.
I believe it is true
-Claude "most collectors are chimps themselves" Kuhnen
Keith Littleton <litt...@katie.vnet.net> schrieb in im Newsbeitrag:
lpOQ3.33$CZ4....@ralph.vnet.net...
> There is a story that was told while me and some
> friends drank beer and watch LSU get beat again.
> (This time it was by only 1 point!!).
>
> The story was about a scientist who had some chimps
> in his lab and he trained them to do abstract painings.
> It got to the point that the chimps were doing some
> rather original paintings, so he took some to a
> gallery and told the onwer that a (human) "friend"
> of his painted them. Anyway, the piantings proved
> very popular and were highly praised by some critics
> as fine works of abstract art. They not only sold,
> but the people complimented the "painter" as being
> very talented person.
>
> This sounds too good to be true. It sounds like a
> classic urban legend.
>
> I am right in believing this to be an urban legend?
>
> What, if any truth, is behind this tale?
>
emu...@imap3.asu.edu
Ruby the Indian Elephant, of the Phoenix (AZ) zoo was a prolific painter, her
"works" were sold to fund-raise for the zoo, used as a design for personal
checks offered by AZ Bank of Americas. She died (tragically, IMHO)
while pregnant under another money-makin scheme.
As for chimps who paint, I only recall something in Nabokov's Lolita about a
chimp who, when given the opportunity to paint, painted a picture of the bars
of his cage. or maybe this was a factoid produced by my prof in conjunction
with reading Lolita.
erin "yes I miss Ruby, I'm a big sentimental fool" M
R H Draney
> Ruby the Indian Elephant, of the Phoenix (AZ) zoo was a prolific painter, her
> "works" were sold to fund-raise for the zoo, used as a design for personal
> checks offered by AZ Bank of Americas. She died (tragically, IMHO)
> while pregnant under another money-makin scheme.
Ruby's work, like the work of the gorilla mentioned elsewhere in this thread, was
also representational...when a child wearing a certain color sweater was hanging
around the zoo one day, Ruby's paintings later that day featured that color
rather prominently...I always thought this was a good way of seeing the world
through some other creature's eyes...what with Ruby's eyes being on the sides of
her head, the world must have looked very different to her than to us
binocular-visioned types...(I remember seeing her walk along a narrow berm in her
enclosure one day and marvelling at how she could keep from slipping off when she
couldn't even see her own hind feet)....
Say, is this a UL?...I have heard that when Ruby was younger she used to lure
ducks into her pen with food and then stomp them to death....r
--
"I may not know much about art, but I know what they tell me I'm supposed to
like."
Phil Edwards
<litt...@katie.vnet.net> wrote:
>The story was about a scientist who had some chimps
>in his lab and he trained them to do abstract painings.
>It got to the point that the chimps were doing some
>rather original paintings, so he took some to a
>gallery and told the onwer that a (human) "friend"
>of his painted them. Anyway, the piantings proved
>very popular and were highly praised by some critics
>as fine works of abstract art.
This story is at least 42 years old.
"In London last June, the inevitable scandal was produced by showing a
film which I made in 1952 - a film which ... partakes fully in the
phase of decomposition [of the arts], precisely in its most extreme
form ... Subsequently the same London audience, at the ICA, was
presented with pictures executed by chimpanzees, which stand
comparison with genuine Tachiste paintings. This pairing strikes me as
telling. *Passive consumers* of culture ... can bring themselves to
love any manifestation of decomposition ... I believe they'll succeed
in *loving* both my film and the paintings of apes in five or six
years' time, just as they love Robbe-Grillet already."
- Guy Debord, November 1957
The film in question was scandalous because - as one admirer of Debord
put it - it has "no images and only a sporadic soundtrack". In French.
Phil "mais bien sur" Edwards
--
Phil Edwards http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/amroth/
"I don't know the answer, and I'm not even sure what the problem is."
- K. D., who isn't reading this
Dutch Courage
>There is a story that was told while me and some
>friends drank beer and watch LSU get beat again.
>(This time it was by only 1 point!!).
>
>The story was about a scientist who had some chimps
>in his lab and he trained them to do abstract painings.
>It got to the point that the chimps were doing some
>rather original paintings, so he took some to a
>gallery and told the onwer that a (human) "friend"
>of his painted them. Anyway, the piantings proved
>very popular and were highly praised by some critics
>as fine works of abstract art. They not only sold,
>but the people complimented the "painter" as being
>very talented person.
>
>This sounds too good to be true. It sounds like a
>classic urban legend.
Hmmm. maybe, dunno. When I was little, I owned a book on the world's classic
hoaxes. It included the Cardiff Giant, I think the Silver Lake Serpent (which
turns out to have been an hoaxed hoax) banana peels, the league of animal
decency, sportscasters amusing themselves by turning in scores from fictitious
colleges for weeks, and etc. The cover was a picture painting chimp, so yeah.
This might cover it
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/089686507X/qid=940994606/sr=1-1/002
-1625728-3818638
"It only takes one nail to hang up a picture of Jesus."
Dr H
On Mon, 25 Oct 1999, Henrik Schmidt wrote:
}A chimp, no idea, but last year a man sent in a few small paintings to
}one of the major censored[1] art exhibit here in Copenhagen, and had
}most of them accepted. Imagine the scandal when it was revealed that the
}artist was the man's 5 year old son.
Presumably the scandal was that he had palmed-off the works of his
extrordinarly talented son as his own?
Dr H
Doug Yanega
evidently was "Congo".
[Desmond] Morris says the only thing he regrets about his 11 years on Zootime
was adopting an infant chimp called Congo. Morris became Congo's
pseudo-mother, even teaching him to paint. When he became violent
and Morris was forced to part with him, he says it broke both their
hearts, and Congo eventually succumbed to disease, although Morris
continued to thrive.
This is the famous painting chimp who had his own art show. It is
discussed at length in Morris' book, "Animal Days", which dealt with his
stint on "Zootime".
Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology
Entomology Research Museum Univ. of California
Riverside, CA 92521 909-787-4315 (opinions are mine, not UCR's)
Charles A. Lieberman
Harry MF Teasley
> Ruby, an elephant at the Phoenix Zoo, gets 2-3 grand per canvas.
Then there's the Chris Ofili method.
Charles "I haven't seen 'Sensation,' but from an aesthetic perspective I'm
told it isn't worth it" Lieberman
--
Charles A. Lieberman | "God bless you, you fearless crusader for justice."
Brooklyn, NY, USA | --Ulo Melton thanks Dav*d Gre*ne for his work in AFU
http://members.tripod.com/~calieber/home.html