Chimps=Ca$h!!
Smart Ape - The Prince of RSPW 2005
LONDON (AFP) - Three paintings by a chimpanzee named Congo were sold at
auction in London to an American buyer for a total of 14,400 pounds (26,250
dollars, 21,610 euros), many times the estimated price.
Congo's works went under the hammer in a sale that included works by French
impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French cubist Fernand Leger and US pop
artist Andy Warhol.
Presale estimates had put their price at between 600 and 800 pounds.
The buyer, Howard Hong, said he was a great fan of modern and contemporary
painting.
Nicknamed "the Cezanne of the ape world" Congo turned out more than 400
paintings and drawings under the encouragement of anthropologist Desmond
Morris.
Morris championed the theory that chimps had artistic sensibilities and put
on a show of Congo's works in the 1950s.
Picasso is said to have had a Congo painting in his studio, in a style
described as belonging to "the abstract expressionist school".
"I doubt whether any work by a chimpanzee has ever been auctioned before,"
Howard Ruthkowski, modern and contemporary art specialist at auctioneer
Bonhams, said before the sale.
--
--- "Damn dirty fleas..."
--- "Ever notice that at the start of a cartoon, Casper has no friends, and
by the end, he has some. Yet, in the next cartoon, he's friendless again?
Therefore, I think Casper is a soul-sucking-vampire-ghost."
--- Proud loser of TWO 2004 RSPW Poster Awards
--- 3rd Highest Vote-Getter in KORSPW 2005
--- Space (Animal) Hero #1 of the 1950's and 60's