Art – davidbruceblog #2

David Bruce: The Funniest People in Books — Children, Christmas

Children

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a poet so popular for such a long time that schoolchildren were made to memorize and recite such poems of his as “The Village Blacksmith” and “Paul Revere’s Ride.” In the old days, a schoolchild who heard a friend accidentally make a rhyme would say, “You’re a poet and don’t know it, but your big feet show it — they’re long fellows!”

• Oscar Wilde’s two boys, Cyril and Vyvyan, preferred to dress in sailor suits, but Mr. Wilde and his wife often dressed them in Little Lord Fauntleroy costumes, especially before showing them off to guests in the drawing room. The boys objected to this, so one day they stripped off the costumes and pranced stark naked into the drawing room.

• The Curious George children’s books about an inquisitive monkey are written and illustrated by H.A. Rey. Children got so involved with the main character of the book that they were sometimes disappointed when they met Mr. and Mrs. Rey. One small, disappointed boy told them, “I thought you were monkeys, too.”

• When she was very small, children’s book author Patricia McKissack toured the house of a former President during a field trip. Later, she was asked to describe what she had seen to a PTA group. Young Patricia reported that her personal guides for the tour had been a rabbit and a mouse.

• When F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, was seven years old, he invited some children to come to his birthday party, and he was very disappointed when no one showed up for the party. To make up for his disappointment, his mother let him eat all of the birthday cake.

• When L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz books, was traveling in Egypt, he met a little Algerian girl who had traveled across the desert with her family on camel. Her family had allowed her to choose one book to bring with her, and she had chosen The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

• Some children are more precocious than others. When he was age 12, Edward Albee had already written his first three-act play, Aliqueen — it was a sex farce.

• Hilaire Belloc wrote quickly and published much. When asked why he wrote so quickly, he replied, “Because my children are howling for pearls and caviar.”

Christmas

• When nonconformist American poet Emily Dickinson was a teenager attending the Mount Holyoke Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, the head of the school, Miss Mary Lyon, told the students that Christmas would be celebrated in a spiritual way. The students would fast in their rooms and pray all day without eating. Miss Lyon then asked the students to stand if they agreed with her plan. Ms. Dickinson remained seated. After the students had sat down again, Miss Lyon asked any students to stand if they disagreed with her plan. Ms. Dickinson was the only student who stood.

• The parents of Jerry Spinelli, author of the Newbery Medal-winning Maniac Magee, spent very little money on themselves, but out of love they made sure that their children enjoyed very nice Christmases. One Christmas, Jerry had unwrapped what he thought was his final present. His father told him, “Well, I guess that’s it. Looks like you did pretty good this year.” Later, Jerry was sent on an errand to the kitchen, and he found his real final present: a Roadmaster bicycle. Mr. Spinelli describes the gift in a memorable way: “Love leaning on a kickstand.”

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Books — Censorship, Children

Censorship

• L. Frank Baum’s books, including The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, have occasionally been censored. In 1957, Ralph Ulveling, the Detroit Library Director, ordered the book taken off library shelves because, he charged, it had a “cowardly approach to life.” The Detroit Times had an interesting response — it serialized the children’s novel, adding a notation that this book had been banned.

Children

• Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of F. Scott, was named after a character — a gypsy queen — in a novel. Throughout her life, she liked to have attention drawn to her. When she was a little girl, she telephoned the fire department, told them that a little girl was stuck on a roof, and gave her own address. She then hung up the telephone, crawled out on the roof, and enjoyed all the commotion she had created. When she was a young unmarried woman, her house was still the center of commotion — young military pilots used to perform aerial stunts over her house to get her attention.

• While attending school in Berkeley, California, Yoshiko Uchida was a member of the Girl Reserves, along with several white girls. One day, a photographer from the local newspaper arrived to take a photo of the Girl Reserves, and he tried to move Yoshiko out of the photo. Fortunately, a white friend, Sylvia, saw what was happening and said, “Come on, Yoshi. Stand next to me.” The two friends linked arms and stood firmly together, forcing the photographer to photograph them. Later, Ms. Uchida became the renowned author of Journey to Topaz.

• The first of the two most important events in Orville Prescott’s life (the other was becoming daily book critic for The New York Times in 1942) occurred when he was six years old and his Grandmother Sherwin offered him a $5 gold piece if he would learn how to read. Although he didn’t quite know what a $5 gold piece was, he knew that it was desirable, and therefore, a few days later, he read a few pages out of a first grade primer to his grandmother and received his rewards — the $5 gold piece and the discovery of the joy of reading.

• Playwright Lillian Hellman was born in 1905, and she was a young girl when the United States fought Germany in World War I. Determined to help the war effort, she and a friend went looking for German spies in Manhattan. They spotted two men wearing raincoats. One of the men carried a violin case, which young Lillian thought might hold a machine gun. She reported the two men to a police officer, who investigated and discovered that the two men were a concert violinist and a college professor.

• In addition to being a practical joker, Hugh Troy was a writer and illustrator of children’s books. Often, he made up series of stories to tell his little niece. One series starred the popular child actress Shirley Temple, but eventually Mr. Troy got tired of his heroine, so he ended the series by having Shirley Temple run over by a steamroller and flattened like a pancake. His niece loved the ending.

• As a school child, Madeleine L’Engle Camp entered one of her poems in a school contest. She won first prize, only to have a teacher accuse her of plagiarizing the poem. Young Madeleine’s mother successfully defended her by showing the teacher other poems and stories that Madeleine had written. As a grownup, Madeleine became famous as Madeleine L’Engle, the author of A Wrinkle in Time.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Work

Work

• Very early in his career, children’s picture-book creator Ezra Jack Keats tried to get a job working for a miserly comic book artist as a cleanup and background man. He arrived to try out for the job with his own brushes because the comic book artist with the job didn’t want him to ruin his brushes. In a poorly lit room, Mr. Keats worked for nearly an hour. The comic book artist then looked at his work, said, “This won’t do,” and told Mr. Keats that he owed him fifteen cents. Mr. Keats asked, “For what?” The comic book artist answered, “The ink.” Mr. Keats was so tired and discouraged that he paid the fifteen cents. Fortunately, Mr. Keats became so successful in his career that he never had to charge a struggling artist fifteen cents for ink.

• Julia Morgan was a woman who was an architect in the first half of the 20^th century, a time when few women were working as architects. She often said, “Don’t ever turn down a small job because you think it’s beneath you.” One of her smallest jobs was a two-room residence in Monterey, California, for a woman who became chair of the Young Women’s Christian Association. Because the woman was pleased with her residence, she was instrumental in getting Ms. Morgan the job of designing several YWCAs — big jobs, all — across the country. (An even smaller job was when Ms. Morgan designed a tiny house for the daughters of her taxi driver to play in.)

• During the Great Depression, the United States government created many jobs for its citizens. Among its jobs program was the Easel Project, which paid artists to create works of art. Many people are likely to regard such a program as a make-work program, with nothing significant resulting from it. Indeed, many of the paintings were sold to a plumber who was interested only in the canvas. He removed the canvas from the frames and used it in his plumbing work! However, some of the artists in the Easel Project, such as Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence, became world-class (in addition to being African-American) artists.

• Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti worked long and hard from 1508 to 1512 as he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Often, he spent days and nights on the scaffolding without leaving, working as paint dripped onto his face and sleeping only inches from the ceiling. He slept in his clothes and his boots, and sometimes when he finally took off his boots, his skin came off with them. The ceiling is a masterpiece, but Pope Julius II became frustrated with the amount of time Michelangelo spent painting it. Sometimes, Pope Julius II came into the Sistine Chapel and yelled up at Michelangelo, “When will it be done?” Michelangelo always yelled back, “When it is done.”

• Country comedian Archie Campbell started out as an artist, and his talent came in handy. While serving in the United States Navy during World War II, he doodled while on duty, drawing several pictures of Donald Duck when he should have been working. His boss caught him in the act, but instead of bawling him out, he asked, “Can you do other things like that?” Mr. Campbell replied that he could, so his boss showed the doodles to a Lieutenant, and Mr. Campbell was put to work illustrating pamphlets for the Bureau of Personnel. In this job, he drew such things as Donald Duck pulling the wrong switch and getting an electrical shock

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Work

Work

• Bill Peet, author and illustrator of children’s picture-books, worked many years for Walt Disney. He started out as an in-betweener — an artist who created the in-between drawings that resulted in a cartoon Donald Duck getting from one position to another — for example, lifting his arm in the air. However, he wanted to move up in the organization, so when the Disney artists were asked to create fantastic monsters for Pinocchio, he figured here was his chance, and so he drew many fantastic monsters and handed them in. Unfortunately, soon afterward another batch of Donald Duck in-between drawings were needed, and he went berserk, shouting, “NO MORE DUCKS! NO MORE LOUSY DUCKS!” — then he stalked out of his office. Later, he realized that he had left his jacket in his office, and the next morning he returned to pick it up. On his drawing table, he found an envelope waiting for him. Of course, he thought that it was a pink slip firing him; however, he discovered instead that the Disney company had liked his monster drawings, given him a bonus, and wanted him to quit creating in-betweens and instead report to the Story Department for Pinocchio.

• As a young artist, Leonardo da Vinci painted a wooden shield for his father, Piero da Vinci. He went all out. After deciding to paint a fearsome creature on the shield, he dissected such animals as bats, crickets, insects, lizards, and snakes. He then used his knowledge of the parts of these animals to imaginatively create a monster that spit fire. Piero was impressed with the shield. He had intended to give it away as a gift, but after seeing it he gave his friend another, inexpensive shield — and he sold the shield that Leonardo had painted. As a young man, Leonardo had some notable skills. For example, he created stinkballs out of decomposing animal parts and fish guts. To entertain people, he used to create colorful flames by throwing red wine into a small container of boiling oil. Leonardo used his brain throughout his life and looked down on those who did not. He wrote, “How many people there are who could be described as mere channels for food.” He wrote that such people produce “nothing but full privies.”

• When he was still very young, Jerry Butler’s grandmother Artise (whom he called Grand Mo Lu) got him his first paying job as an artist. He had drawn a picture of Jesus, and she showed it to the people at the Baptist church they attended. They liked the drawing well enough to pay him to create a religious mural on the back of their baptismal pool. To pay for the mural, they took up a collection that netted him the seemingly astronomical sum of $140. Other religious people saw the mural, and they asked him to paint murals at their churches, too, paying him with what they took up in collections. In his 1998 book, A Drawing in the Sand: A Story of African American Art, Mr. Butler wrote that a couple of those murals still exist, but if he could, he would destroy them because his ability as an artist has grown so much since then.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Travel, War, Weddings

Travel

• During World War II, artist Marc Chagall left France to escape the Nazi invasion. He went to the United States, where unfortunately he refused to learn English. For a long time, Mr. Chagall refused to leave France for the United States, in part because of a lack of understanding about the country. In fact, he once asked, “Are there trees and cows in America, too?”

War

• Mathew B. Brady is famous because of many Civil War photographs; however, from 1858, he began to suffer from poor eyesight and relied on other photographers to focus his camera, although he set up the shot. During the Civil War, he got permission from President Abraham Lincoln to photograph the war, and he trained many photographers to help him do that. After the Battle of Gettysburg, Mr. Brady and several photographers whom he had trained took photographs of the corpses on the battlefield. If it were needed to make a photograph more dramatic, they would change the position of a corpse. Did Mr. Brady take all the photographs that have been attributed to him? Probably not. He took credit for all the photographs that the men he had trained took — something that did not make him popular with these photographers.

• Charles M. Schulz, creator of the comic strip Peanuts, was a soldier in World War II, but fortunately saw little action. He once saw a German soldier crossing the field, so he aimed his rifle at him and pulled the trigger. The rifle did not fire — Mr. Schulz had not loaded it due to forgetfulness. Fortunately, the German soldier surrendered. Mr. Schulz also once thought some German soldiers were in an artillery emplacement, so he got ready to throw a grenade into the emplacement. However, he saw a dog go into the emplacement, so he didn’t throw the grenade because he didn’t want to kill an innocent dog. Fortunately, it turned out that no German soldiers were there. Later, Mr. Schulz said, “I guess I fought a pretty civilized war.”

• In the telling of one World War II joke, the Nazi commandant of Paris ordered Pablo Picasso to appear before him. When Picasso was ushered into the commandant’s presence, the commandant showed Picasso a reproduction of Guernica, the artist’s anti-war mural that showed German bombers’ destruction of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The commandant asked Picasso, “Did you do that?” Picasso replied, “No. You did.”

• Author Quentin Crisp used to make a living as a nude model for art classes. During World War II, a bomb fell near where he was modeling. The art students dove for the floor and relative safety, but Mr. Crisp kept on posing.

Weddings

• Many people, including straight people, love the characters of Alison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. At a wedding ceremony, one couple had a table set up to display objects representing people they wanted at the wedding, but who were not able to attend the ceremony. One of the items was a button of Mo, the central character in the comic strip (and the one based on its creator).

• Stan Lee created the Fantastic Four with such characters as Richard Reed, who acquired the ability to stretch his body like rubber, and Sue Storm, who acquired the ability to become invisible and to create force fields. When the two characters got married in the comic book, Mr. Lee had artist Jack Kirby draw the two of them as characters attending the wedding.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Television. Theater, Travel

Television

• Being a commercial artist has its perks. Elmer Lehnhardt was hired to create the artwork used to decorate a children’s lunchbox featuring scenes from the TV series Land of the Giants, starring a crew of American astronauts who land on a planet of giants. One side of the lunchbox showed the American space crew being menaced by a giant man — the face of the giant was a self-portrait by Mr. Lehnhardt.

Theater

• Despite his profession, 19^th-century cartoonist Bernhard Gillam took a serious view of life. Eugene Zimmerman, a friend and fellow cartoonist, once took him to see a comic play. While the other members of the audience laughed, Mr. Gillam scowled. After the play was over and they were leaving the theater, Mr. Gillam turned to Mr. Zimmerman and said, “If you ever dare to take me to see such rot again, I’ll kill you.”

• For a Sunday newspaper, Sam Norkin once created a caricature for the opening of a play titled All You Need is One Good Break. Unfortunately, the critics hated the play, and it closed Saturday night. Sy Peck, editor of the New York Compass, decided to run the caricature anyway, with the heading “All You Need is One Good Break got no break from the critics.”

• When children’s book illustrator Denise Fleming was a young girl, she and the neighborhood kids sometimes put on plays, charging other kids buttons for admission. Her young neighbor Charlie once tore all the buttons off his shirt so he could pay for himself and his friends to attend one of the plays.

• Fire inspectors in the world of dance can terrify art lovers. For example, fire inspectors test scenery for fireproofing by attempting to set it on fire. Ballet dancer Frank Moncion moaned when he saw the fire inspectors test the setting for the ballet Firebird — it had been designed by Marc Chagall.

Travel

• Joseph H. Meyers, at one time an English instructor at Purdue, was annoyed by bad guides when he toured Europe. He and his wife were able to get rid of the guides by being annoying. When a guide tried to tell the Meyers about Raphael’s Wedding of the Virgin, Mrs. Meyers said, “Raphael was an American.” The guide, of course, said, “No, no!” However, Mr. Meyers backed up his wife: “Raphael was born in Philadelphia.” His wife then added, “We knew him personally.” Eventually, the guide decided to leave them alone.

• Late in life, Spanish painter Francisco Goya lived for a while in France. Of course, for long periods of time — including during much of Mr. Goya’s lifetime — France and Spain have not been friendly, and the French police watched Mr. Goya for a time. Eventually, they decided that he was not a spy because he was so deaf and he was not able to cause trouble because his command of the French language was so poor.

• Toller Cranston is both a Canadian figure skater and an artist. Once, he was performing in Wichita, Kansas, where he stayed in a hotel room with okra and mustard paintings on the wall. However, before he could sleep there, he demanded that the paintings be removed from his room. Why? He told the management, “I simply couldn’t spend the weekend with them.”

• MAD publisher William M. Gaines used to take the MAD writers and artists on a trip every year or two. One year, he took everybody to Rome, and they visited the Sistine Chapel, where a tour guide informed them that Michelangelo had spent 15 years painting the ceiling. MAD writer Dick DeBartolo explained why: “Yeah, but it was two coats!”

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Sculpture, Surrealism, Telephones, Television

Sculpture

• The statue of Abraham Lincoln inside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., depicts Lincoln sitting. That is the result of a conscious decision made by its sculptor, Daniel Chester French. The statue is inside a building created by architect Henry Bacon, and the building resembles the Parthenon, a Greek temple with huge vertical marble pillars. If the statue were to depict Lincoln standing up, the impact of his figure would be lost among all the other vertical lines. Of course, Mr. French made many other artistic decisions when creating his statue of Lincoln. For example, one foot is forward, while the other is close to the chair Lincoln is sitting on. One of Lincoln’s hands is open, while the other is closed. In addition, one of Mr. Lincoln’s hands has a tapping finger because Mr. French noticed that Mr. Lincoln was using a finger to tap while talking to his generals in a photograph taken by Matthew Brady.

• Pablo Picasso was a genius when it came to art, and he could create works of art from things other people regarded as junk. In 1942, he took a discarded bicycle seat and pair of handlebars and created a sculpture he called Head of a Bull, which he then cast in bronze.

Surrealism

• Surrealists André Breton and Jacques Vaché used to go to movie theaters, but they ignored whatever movie was showing. Instead, they brought wine and food and had a picnic while everyone else watched the movie. However, Mr. Vaché occasionally attended plays for real. If he liked a play that the audience hated, he would threaten to shoot the members of the audience. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr. Vaché died of an opium overdose.)

• In 1938, when surrealism was new and few people knew what it was, comedian Gracie Allen had an exhibition of her paintings at a prestigious New York gallery. According to George Burns, her husband, everyone knew Gracie was a surrealist painter because no one understood her paintings, many of which had titles such as “Man Beholds a Better Mouse Trap and Buys a Mohair Toupée.” Later, the exhibition went on a U.S. tour.

Telephones

• Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, used to live in an apartment near a fish store. His telephone number was one digit different from the telephone number of the fish store, and he used to occasionally get wrong numbers from people ordering fish. When that happened, he drew a picture of the order — say, two haddock — on a piece of cardboard from his laundry service and sent it to the fish store along with the rest of the order information.

• Dick Sears worked at the Walt Disney studios in the early days as head of the Story department. He once saw an unusual name in the telephone and decided to make a call: “Hello, is this Gisella Werberserk Piffl? … I’m an old friend of your brother’s. We were classmates at Cornell. … Oh, you’ve never had a brother who attended Cornell? I’m sorry — you must be some other Gisella Werberserk Piffl.”

Television

• On The Dick Van Dyke Show, the episode “October Eve” is about a painting that has Laura Petrie’s head, but the nude body of another woman. (The character Laura Petrie was played by Mary Tyler Moore.) The episode was based on a real-life experience of writer Bill Persky, who had gone to an art gallery and seen a painting that closely resembled his wife. Jerry Paris, who played Jerry Helper on the series, had a similar experience. He and his wife had visited a prison, where a prisoner had sketched his wife’s face. After they had left the prison, the prisoner used his imagination to create a nude drawing of Mrs. Paris, then sent it to their home as a present.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Problem-Solving, Revenge, Sculpture

Problem-Solving

• Watanabe Kazan, a samurai and a painter, was once placed under house arrest and ordered not to paint. Because he needed the income that he derived from painting, he continued to paint, but added earlier dates to his paintings to fool the authorities.

Revenge

• Al Capp, creator of Li’l Abner, once hosted a party for a group of South American cartoonists. Unfortunately, he discovered that none of them could speak English. This meant that the only English-speaking people were himself, his brother, a few members of the State Department who wanted to foster greater understanding between North and South Americans, and fellow cartoonist Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo. Mr. Capp got tired of his party, so he and his brother ducked out, leaving Mr. Kelly to host the non-English-speaking South American cartoonists. Mr. Kelly responded with a creative act of revenge. He found an interpreter, and he told one of the South American cartoonists that Mr. Capp had told him that it was his dearest wish that the cartoonist be given his baby grand piano. When Mr. Capp arrived back home, he discovered his baby grand being lowered from his living-room window to the street below so it could be moved to a ship and taken to South America.

• Hugh Troy was once summoned along with some other artists to the estate of a wealthy society lady who was holding an auction — attendance by invitation only (in other words, only rich people are welcome) — to raise money for a charity to benefit something or other. When the artists arrived, she told them, “I am giving you just two minutes of my time. You are each to paint a picture for the auction.” When Mr. Troy asked if the artists were allowed to attend the party after their work was done, the society lady said, “No.” Then the society lady ordered a servant to take the artists to a place with art materials they could use to paint pictures for the charity auction. However, Mr. Troy was annoyed at the woman, so instead of painting a picture he painted these signs: “Picnic Parties Welcome,” “Welcome to the Carnival!” and “Free Rides! Bring the Kiddies!” Then he displayed the signs all around the entrance to the woman’s estate, and left.

• In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Grant Wood received a commission from the American Legion to create a stained-glass window. Unfortunately, the Daughters of the American Revolution made a big stink when they discovered that the glass had been made in Germany, the United States’ enemy in the then-recent World War I. (By the way, Mr. Wood had served in the U.S. Army.) The DAR wrote indignant letters and made indignant speeches. Mr. Wood got revenge later when he painted a portrait of three sour-faced women — he titled it “Daughters of the American Revolution.”

Sculpture

• Maya Lin designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., as the result of an assignment by Professor Andrus Burr of Yale University. He gave everyone in his class the guidelines of the contest to design the Memorial — it had to include the names of all the Americans killed or missing in action during the Vietnam War, and it had to be in harmony with the landscape and monuments of the Mall. Of all the students in the class, Ms. Lin was the only one to submit her design to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. Her design consisted of two walls that sank into the ground and then rose again. The names of the Vietnam dead and MIAs were engraved on the two walls. In addition, the walls were made of highly polished black marble to give a reflection of the Mall and of the people looking at the walls. Although Ms. Lin’s design was the unanimous winner of the contest, when she had submitted her design to Professor Burr, he felt that it was “too strong” and gave it a B. However, Professor Burr encouraged Ms. Lin to submit her design to the VVMF, and he made two important suggestions concerning her design, both of which she accepted. He suggested that the two walls come together and form an angle, and he suggested that the names on the wall be arranged by date of death rather than by alphabetical order — a stroke of genius that Ms. Lin says kept the wall from looking “like a telephone book engraved in granite.”

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving

• Ham Fisher created the comic strip Joe Palooka and took some sample panels to McNaught Newspaper Syndicate, which was not interested in the strip but offered him a job selling comic strips to newspapers. Mr. Fisher accepted the job, and he traveled from newspaper to newspaper selling various comic strips to them, including Joe Palooka, which he pretended the syndicate was offering. When he returned to the home office, he had 20 newspapers signed up to carry Joe Palooka and the syndicate decided to carry it.

• When Arthur Yorinks and Richard Egielski decided to collaborate on a children’s picture-book titled Louis the Fish, author Yorinks wrote that Louis was a salmon. However, illustrator Egielski didn’t know how to draw a salmon, so he went to a grocery store, where he found a picture of one on the label of a can of salmon. Since he watched his money carefully in those days, he didn’t buy the can, but instead tore off the label and smuggled it out of the store. Mr. Egielski says, “The salmon on that can is what I used to draw Louis.”

• When Robert McCloskey was creating his picture-book Make Way for Ducklings, he bought and kept six ducklings in his bathtub so he could sketch them. One problem he ran into was that the ducklings were so active that he found it difficult to sketch them, so he needed to find a way to slow them down. Eventually, he discovered the solution to his problem — red wine. The ducklings loved the wine, and it made them so mellow that they moved in slow motion.

• A nobleman once commissioned William Hogarth to paint his portrait, which Mr. Hogarth did, but then the nobleman refused to accept and pay for the painting. Mr. Hogarth wrote the nobleman, saying that unless the portrait was paid for, he would add a tail and other such embellishments to the portrait, then sell it to an exhibitor of wild beasts. The threat worked — Mr. Hogarth received the money the nobleman owed him.

• Comedian Anita Wise was in a store, looking at miniature paintings on very small boxes. She wasn’t interested in buying anything, just looking, but a salesman began talking to her about the miniature paintings, pointing out that the artists had created them by using a single camel hair as a brush. Ms. Wise asked, “Why don’t they just get bigger boxes?”

• One winter, Impressionist painter Claude Monet started painting a tree without leaves. Unfortunately, he had not finished painting the tree when spring arrived and leaves appeared on the tree. In order to finish his painting, he paid the owner of the tree 50 francs to remove all of its leaves. In May, Mr. Monet finished his painting.

• Spanish painter Francisco Goya usually painted in the bright light of the morning, but he sometimes did a few finishing touches at night. Electric lights had not yet been invented, so he painted by candlelight. In fact, while painting at night he often wore a hat that had a rim set with metal brackets to hold candles.

• The show must go on. Painter Georges Rouault was behind schedule in creating the costumes and sets for the premiere of George Balanchine’s Prodigal Son by the Ballets Russes. Members of Ballets Russes locked Mr. Rouault in a room until he had finished the costumes and sets.

• Renaissance painters and sculptors often showed draped clothing in their art. So that a model would not have to pose for hours while the artists worked on the draped clothing, the artists would take cloth, soak it in plaster, pose it and let it harden to serve as their model.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art —Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving

• Clementine Hunter was a self-taught African-American folk artist who sold her paintings to buy some of the necessities (and some of the luxuries) of life such as a stove, refrigerator, freezer, mobile home, secondhand car, radio, and television. Because of a lack of money, she sometimes thinned her paint with turpentine, and she often painted on pieces of board and on plastic milk jugs. Eventually, she became well known as an artist, and celebrity seekers started trying to visit her. She didn’t especially enjoy meeting strangers, and when a car of celebrity seekers came by, she would tell them, “Clementine Hunter? She lives just on down the road a piece.” After her death, one of her works of art — a window shade she had painted — sold for $60,000.

• Because Winslow Homer was a famous artist, lots of people wished to visit him in his studio. However, because Mr. Homer was a hard-working artist, he wished to be alone in his studio so he could paint. Therefore, to ward off unwelcome visitors, on the door of his studio he painted these words: “Coal Bin.” Of course, his friends were welcome to visit him. These friends used a code knock to gain entrance to his studio. When they knocked three times, Mr. Homer opened the door. A different number of knocks, and Mr. Homer kept the door closed. Of course, Mr. Homer couldn’t avoid all unwelcome visitors. When he could, he ran away and hid; when he couldn’t run and hide, he pretended to be not himself, but his servant.

• The very wealthy merchant Su once brought a large and valuable pearl to a skilled jeweler named Czu and asked him to drill a hole in it so that it could be made part of a necklace. However, Czu examined the pearl and said, “This pearl is much too valuable for me to risk ruining it.” Therefore, Su took the pearl to another skilled jeweler, Li-jo, and asked him to drill a hole in it. Li-jo examined the pearl, realized its great value, and called an apprentice over and told him to drill a hole in the pearl. The apprentice did so quickly and perfectly. Su asked Li-jo why he had entrusted such a valuable pearl to a mere apprentice. Li-jo replied, “He does not know how valuable the pearl is, and so his hands didn’t shake when he drilled a hole in it.”

• Sculptor Louise Nevelson once created a retrospective exhibition at New York City’s Whitney Museum of American Art. Because it was a retrospective exhibition, it included some of her early work — including work she was no longer proud of. One piece that she especially disliked was a sculpture titled Earth Figure. A friend of hers was helping to move the works of art around the gallery, and as he was moving Earth Figure, she suddenly yelled, “Drop it!” Startled, he did drop it, and the sculpture shattered on the floor. Later, the friend — her biographer Arnold Glimcher — wrote, “She was now satisfied with the exhibition; she had edited out the weakest piece.”

• Late in life, after Leonardo da Vinci had become very famous and was working at the Vatican, uninvited visitors often interrupted his work. To get rid of unwanted visitors, he turned his pet lizard into a monster by gluing a horn to its head and bat-like wings to its back. He also created glittering spots on its back, perhaps by using fish scales. Leonardo asked unwanted visitors if they would like to see a curiosity, and when they replied yes, Leonardo let the lizard out of a box. The lizard scurried to the visitors, and the visitors scurried to the nearest exit.

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