The German magazine
Uhu reported that x-ray analysis of Thomas Gainborough's famous work
The Blue Boy (completed circa 1770) had revealed that the boy in the picture was really a girl. The x-ray analysis, done to verify the authenticity of the painting, had shown that beneath the top layer of paint Gainsborough had drawn a picture of a nude female standing in the same position. In its next issue,
Uhu claimed that this spoof had been "widely believed in art circles."
More…
The
Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung reported the discovery that Leonardo da Vinci had originally painted the Mona Lisa frowning, not smiling. As a result, the Louvre had restored the painting to its original condition. But because the Mona Lisa's unhappy scowl seemed to rob the painting of much of its charm, the museum's directors were considering changing the frown back into a smile.
More…
The April 3 issue of the
Saturday Evening Post had an April Fool cover drawn by Norman Rockwell, in which the artist placed 45 "mistakes and incongruities." (Click the cover to see a larger version, and the list of mistakes.)
More…
Norman Rockwell created a second April Fool cover for the
Saturday Evening Post. His first such cover, in
1943, had been the magazine's most popular cover ever. Like its predecessor, the 1945 cover contained numerous "mistakes and incongruities" — 50 in all, according to Rockwell. However, the Post editors warned readers that the blue lobster didn't count as a mistake, noting that the "blue lobster is a rarity, but every once in a while one of them turns up in Maine waters."
More…
The April 3 issue of the
Saturday Evening Post featured an April Fool cover by Norman Rockwell, in which the artist had placed 56 "mistakes and incongruities." It was the third such April Fool cover by Rockwell. (The previous ones ran in
1943 and
1945.) Click the cover to see the list of mistakes.
More…
On March 29, 1962, a man walking along the beach near the Dutch town of Zandvoort reported a bizarre discovery. He had found, washed up on the sand, a small statue that looked just like the famous statues on Easter Island. Based on the statue's weathered appearance, it seemed that the ocean currents must have carried it all the way from the South Pacific to the Netherlands.
The discovery made headlines around the world. An expert from Norway confirmed it was an authentic Easter Island artifact. But on April 1, a local artist named Edo van Tetterode confessed that he had actually made the statue and planted it on the beach, having been inspired by the research of Thor Heyerdahl.
More…
Thousands of people in Florence, Italy came out to see Michelangelo's Pieta statue driven through the city in the back of a truck. A poster on the truck declared that the statue, which normally resided in the Vatican City, had been "taken from Rome by Florentine artists so it won't be shipped anywhere."
The artists were angry at the Pope's decision to allow the Pieta to be temporarily moved to New York to be displayed at the 1964 World's Fair.
The people lining the streets applauded the truck and the brazen theft of the statue, but when the truck stopped before the cathedral in the city, it could be seen that the statue was actually only a plaster cast of the Pieta.
The real Pieta was still in Rome and was later shipped to New York, as promised. It was subsequently safely returned to Italy.
More…
Wisconsin's
Sheboygan Press reported that an anonymous buyer had purchased one of Vincent Van Gogh's "great masterpieces" for $186,000 and was donating it to the John Michael Kohler Art Center. The work was a "pencil-and-Crayola" drawing titled "A Prity Day." Van Gogh created the work in 1860. (Van Gogh was born in 1853.)
The
Sheboygan Press noted that the work had long been "a favorite with the intellectual art community," and that one scholar had "devoted nearly five years to analyzing it."
More…
The Independent reported that an art restoration team doing extensive cleaning of the Mona Lisa had made a startling discovery. Although the woman in the painting is famous for her smile, once the layers of dirt had been removed, it was found that she was actually scowling.
More…
On the eve of April Fool's Day, a lavish party was held at Jeff Koons's New York studio to honor the memory of the late, great American artist Nat Tate — a troubled abstract expressionist who destroyed 99 percent of his own work before leaping to his death from the Staten Island ferry. At the party, David Bowie read aloud selections from William Boyd's soon-to-be released biography of Tate,
Nat Tate: An American Artist, 1928-1960. Critics in the crowd murmured appreciative comments about Tate's work as they sipped their drinks. What they didn't know is that Tate had never existed. He was the satirical creation of William Boyd. Bowie, Boyd, and Boyd's publisher were the only ones in on the joke.
More…
BMW announced the limited availability of a porcelain statuette of the BMW Z8, created by the "legendary Prussian ceramicist" Loof Lirpa. The actual size of the statuette, a note at the bottom of the ad revealed, was 15ft x 5ft.
[Note: I don't know when or where this ad ran. The BMW Z8 was produced between 1999 and 2003, so presumably this ad ran at some point in that time period.]
More…
