Art – Page 2 – davidbruceblog #2

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

Prejudice

• In the 1920s, Oliver W. Harrington and one other boy were the only black students in a South Bronx 6^th-grade class. One day, their teacher, Miss McCoy, called them to the front of the classroom, pointed her finger at them, and told the white students, “Never, never forget that these two belong in that there trash basket.” Mr. Harrington says that the white students laughed in what “must have been their first trip on the racist drug.” After that experience, Mr. Harrington began to draw caricatures of Miss McCoy (showing such things as a train running over her), and he became a famous black cartoonist who has published several collections of his work.

• In 1951, Marty Links, cartoonist of Teena, was nominated to become the first woman member of the National Cartoonist Society. She was blackballed. Why? The reason given was that the men wanted to “talk dirty” and they couldn’t do that in the presence of a woman. Protests followed. Al Capp, cartoonist of Li’l Abner, walked out — six years later, following changes for the better in the NCS, he returned. Milton Caniff, cartoonist of Terry and the Pirates, made a speech supporting Ms. Links, and definitely not supporting the people who had blackballed her. Eventually, Ms. Links became a member in good standing, and she promptly nominated two other women cartoonists for membership in the NCS.

• Edward Mitchell Bannister was an important early African-American artist, and he faced prejudice. When he heard that his painting titled Under the Oaks had won a prize at the Centennial Exposition of 1876, he wanted to confirm this information, so he made his way through a crowd of people at the exhibition. While doing so, he heard someone say, “Why is this colored person here?” When he reached the inquiry desk, he was ignored, and when he finally was able to ask if Under the Oaks had won a prize, the man at the inquiry desk asked, “What’s that to you?” Mr. Bannister replied, “I painted that picture.” (His painting won the bronze medal.)

• Not all European countries are free of racism. When she was a college student, Maya Lin, whose ancestry is Chinese, traveled to Denmark. When she sat down on a bus, the people sitting near her got up, moved away from her, and sat down again. Later, Ms. Lin designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

Problem-Solving

• American artist Romare Bearden once ran into a creative block and was unable to paint. One day, his housekeeper asked if the unpainted piece of brown paper that was lying on his easel was the same unpainted piece of brown paper that she had seen there the previous week. It was, and Mr. Bearden confessed that he was suffering from a creative block. Fortunately, the housekeeper, a plain woman whom one of Mr. Bearden’s friends had called so ugly that “she looked like a locomotive coming around a corner,” had the solution: “Why don’t you paint me? I know what I look like, but when you look and find what’s beautiful in me, then you’re going to be able to do something on that paper of yours.” The suggestion worked. Mr. Bearden painted her, then he continued to create many great works of art.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Portraits, Practical Jokes, Prejudice

Portraits

• Paul Cézanne was an Impressionist perfectionist. He made Ambroise Vollard sit 115 times while creating his portrait. When the portrait was finished, Mr. Cézanne declared that its only satisfactory part was the front of Mr. Vollard’s shirt.

• Romaine Brooks painted many celebrities. She found it difficult to get Jean Couteau to sit so she could paint him until she discovered his weakness — she bribed him with pieces of chocolate cake.

• Actress Sarah Siddons’ nose was somewhat longer than usual. When Thomas Gainsborough attempted her portrait, he exclaimed, “D*mn it, madam, there is no end to your nose!”

Practical Jokes

• Mike Balukas was an artist at the Walt Disney studios in the early days. He was deaf, so he was unable to hear people shouting “Earthquake!” in times when people had an urgent need to shout “Earthquake!” in order to get other people out of buildings that might quickly collapse. Therefore, Mr. Balukas used to place a number of short pencil stubs on top of his desk. When an earthquake occurred, the pencil stubs fell onto his drawing board, and he knew to get out of the building — quickly. Recognizing an opportunity when they saw it, other Disney employees would sometimes sneak into a room that shared a wall with Mr. Balukas’ room, and they would bang on the wall until the pencil stubs fell onto Mr. Balukas’ drawing board, sending him running for safety.

• Old money doesn’t like new money. That is what Alva Smith discovered when she married William K. Vanderbilt in the 1870s. Although Mr. Vanderbilt had approximately $100 million, they were 100 million newdollars, and so old money did not especially care for the Vanderbilts. However, Mrs. Vanderbilt wanted to climb the social strata, and so she hired an architect to design a $3 million mansion for her and her husband. Unfortunately, the architect she hired was Richard M. Hunt, whose idea of a private joke was to build her a replica of the mansion of Jacques Coeur, a famous 15^th-century social climber.

• Children’s book illustrator Victoria Chess owns two cats, Zazou and Pearl, which like to play practical jokes on her pet dog. Working together, Zazou and Pearl capture a chipmunk and carry it into the house, where they release it near the dog. They then sit back and watch the dog explode into a furniture-upheaving frenzy.

• Practical joker Hugh Troy once painted a mural for the Bowery Savings Bank in New York City. The mural depicted the New York port in the heyday of the clipper ships. In the foreground was a clipper ship with its mast filled with signal flags. Deciphered, the signal flags read, “Keep your money in your mattress.”

Prejudice

• American artist Romare Bearden was light-skinned and could have passed for white if he had wished. In fact, when he was a young man, he was a good baseball player and could have passed for white in the white-only major leagues if he had wished; however, he had absolutely no wish to pass for white. One day, when he was three years old, his parents took him shopping in the white section of Charlotte, North Carolina. His mother went into a store, and his father left young Romare in their horse-drawn carriage for a moment to look in a store window. When his father came back to fair-skinned Romare in the carriage, white people were shocked and thought that he was a kidnapper. Soon afterward, his family moved to New York City, where they hoped to find a less racist area of America.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Photography, Portraits

Photography

• For several months, Albert E. Kahn photographed Soviet ballerina Galina Ulanova, but he is aware that his photographs record only a small part of her career — a career that has not been much recorded in photographs. He asked a Soviet photographer why more photographs were not taken of her, and the Soviet replied, “You know how it is when you are very close to something beautiful, so close that you can reach out and touch it with your hand? You sometimes tend to take that beauty for granted, as if it will always be there.”

• MAD occasionally uses photographs in its satires. Originally, the photographers — creators for MAD — used professional models, but the models were unable to pose satirically. This led the MAD creators to grimace and make funny faces to illustrate what they wanted the models to do. Eventually, someone figured out that they could get better photographs and save money by using MAD people, including MAD publisher William M. Gaines, in the photographs instead of professional models.

• At the 1998 American Choreography Awards show, Rose Eichenbaum went up to choreographer Daniel Ezralow and told him, “I am a talented photographer and would very much like to photograph you. Do you think that would be possible?” He told her, “I’m sure you are, and I’ll be happy to work with you.” He also gave her his private telephone number. The photo shoot went well, and they became friends. He later told her that he had to take her seriously because of how bold she had been.

• Christina Lessa is a renowned photographer of gymnasts. As such, she must be very persuasive and very creative. For example, her 1997 book, Gymnastics Balancing Acts, includes photographs of a barefoot Shannon Miller standing on top of a horse during a cold winter day, Dominique Dawes balancing near the edge of the top of a Times Square skyscraper, and Trent Dimas jumping near a steep incline by the Statue of Liberty.

• Ron Protas is renowned for his photographs of famous dancers and choreographers, including a silhouette photograph of Martha Graham in her old age sitting on a stool. He was always unfailingly polite. Whenever he was asked to leave a performance because he was taking photographs, he would chuckle, then leave by a door — and re-enter by another door so he could take more photographs.

• Portrait painting has at least one advantage over portrait photography. Queen Victoria once asked court painter Alfred Chalfont, whether photography would replace painting. The Frenchman replied, “Ah, non, Madame! Photographie can’t flattère.”

• Berenice Abbot wanted to go to the Bowery to take a few photographs, but a supervisor tried to stop her from going by telling her that nice girls did not go to the Bowery. She replied that she was a photographer — not a nice girl.

Portraits

• Wandering artists in the American frontier days used to make money by painting portraits with no faces. The portraits might be of one person, a married couple, or even an entire family, and the people in the portraits wore fancy, expensive clothing. The artist then traveled around, showing settlers the portraits. If a settler liked one, the artist would then paint in the face of the settler, or of the settler and his wife, or even the settler’s entire family, depending on which portrait the settler bought. Thus, many settlers owned portraits showing them wearing clothing they had never worn.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — People with Handicaps, Photography

People with Handicaps

• While fighting in World War I as a member of the African-American Hell Fighters of the 369^th Regiment, painter Horace Pippin was wounded by a German sniper as he dove into a shell hole. A French soldier came by, looked in the hole, then was shot by the sniper and fell dead on top of Mr. Pippin, who had lost so much blood that he was unable to move the French soldier off of himself. Eventually, Mr. Pippin was rescued and a steel plate was put in his right shoulder. Of course, his right arm was weak and stiff after the injury, and it looked as if he would never create art again. However, at home one day he noticed a poker resting in the fire that kept his house warm. The tip of the poker was white-hot, and Mr. Pippin discovered that he could hold the cool end of the poker with his right arm, rest the poker on his knee, and create a burnt drawing by using his left arm to hold a wooden plank up to the white-hot poker. He managed to create several burnt-wood panels that way, including his first: Losing the Way.

• In 1897, José Clemente Orozco was a 14-year-old boy living in Mexico City, Mexico. Like other boys his age, he was curious about fireworks and gunpowder, and when he was alone one day, he experimented. Suddenly, the gunpowder exploded, blowing three fingers off his left hand and also badly injuring his right hand. Young Clemente ended up having his left hand amputated, and he nearly lost his right hand as well. In addition, his sight and hearing were damaged. For the rest of his life, he was forced to wear thick glasses, and he never regained hearing in his left ear. Nevertheless, he became one of Mexico’s foremost painters, gaining special renown for his murals. In 1947, he won Mexico’s National Prize in the Arts and Sciences, and when he died in 1949, he was given the honor of burial in the Rotunda de los Hombres Illustres (Rotunda of the Illustrious Men).

• Al Capp, creator of the comic strip Li’l Abner, had a wooden leg, which occasionally created embarrassing situations for him. One morning, at the Savoy Hotel in London, he lay in bed as a waiter took his breakfast order. Because Mr. Capp was well covered with bedding, the waiter could not tell that he had only one leg, but the waiter did notice the foot of Mr. Capp’s wooden leg, clothed in a shoe and a stocking, sticking out from under the bed. In fact, the waiter stared at it. Becoming aware that Mr. Capp was watching him stare at the leg, the waiter recovered his composure, finished taking Mr. Capp’s order, then said, “Very good, sir. And what will the other gentleman have?”

• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the little person who became a great Impressionist painter, once did a series of lithographs featuring singer Yvette Guilbert, who was not beautiful. As Ms. Guilbert looked over the lithographs, she noticed that Mr. Toulouse-Lautrec had made some things grotesque, and so she said to him, “Really, you have a genius for depicting deformity!” He replied, “But of course.”

Photography

• As a wildlife photographer, M. Timothy O’Keefe had to be a patient man, as it took days or weeks to photograph the scenes he wanted. He also had to be quick, as taking the actual photograph took a fraction of a second. To focus his camera ahead of time, he used to tape his driver license to something in the scene he would photograph, such as a tree limb, focus on the license, then remove it. In 1979, he wanted to photograph an owl with a freshly caught mouse, so he picked a tree branch where an owl might enjoy a meal, focused his camera, then waited in a blind. One night, he heard a squeak of a mouse, then the owl settling on the branch. He tripped the shutter, four strobe lights illuminated the branch, and he had the photograph he wanted. Well, almost. Yes, he had photographed the owl and the mouse, but he had also photographed his driver license, which he had forgotten to remove from the tree limb.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Painting

Painting

• When she was a child, ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq used to look at the painting Sacred and Profane Love and wonder which figure represented Sacred Love: the fully clothed figure, or the nude figure? She was told that the nude figure symbolized virtue. Therefore, she was looking forward to dancing the role of Sacred Love in Sir Frederick Ashton’s ballet Illuminations — to be relatively unclothed is a blessing to a dancer, as too much costuming interferes with the ability to dance. Unfortunately, Sacred Love wore a lot of costuming in the ballet, whereas Profane Love wore much less costuming. In fact, the ballerina dancing the role of Profane Love wore one ballet slipper instead of two. However, this turned out not to be a blessing, as the ballerina frequently forgot which foot was shod and in going up on pointe with the unshod foot, she bruised all five toenails, resulting in some unballerina-like cursing in the wings.

• When trains were new inventions, Impressionist Claude Monet created paintings of them. He became friends with a stationmaster who helped him paint the trains. For example, the stationmaster would reschedule trains to enable Mr. Monet to finish a painting. In addition, the stationmaster would have the train engineers release clouds of white smoke so that Mr. Monet could paint them.

• Movie director Peter Bogdanovich’s father was an artist who would not sign a painting until after it was sold. He once went to the home of a person who had bought a painting and brought a palette so that he could sign it. Half an hour later, the art collector looked in the room where the painting was and discovered the artist busily repainting the work of art.

• Clementine Hunter was a self-taught African-American folk artist who painted after all her other work was done. Often, she painted at night while her husband, Emmanuel, tried to sleep. One night, he told her, “Woman, if you don’t stop painting and get some sleep, you’ll sure go crazy.” She replied, “No, if I don’t get this painting out of my head, I’ll sure go crazy.”

• The most famous painting in the world is perhaps Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. After he died, it became the possession of King Francis I of France. French royalty owned the painting for centuries, although they didn’t always choose to hang it in a place that art lovers would consider appropriate. For a while, the Mona Lisa was displayed in the royal bathroom!

• When Paul Cézanne was 13 years old, he rescued a skinny, near-sighted kid named Émile Zola from bullies. To show his gratitude, the future novelist gave the future painter a basket filled with apples. As an adult, Mr. Cézanne frequently painted apples and once declared, “I wish to conquer Paris with an apple.”

• Impressionist painter Edgar Degas regarded gold frames as garish and in bad taste. At a dinner party, he discovered one of his paintings in a gold frame. He waited until he was alone, then he took his painting out of the frame, rolled up the canvas, put it under his arm, and left the party, carrying away the painting.

• Some great art is painted on ordinary surfaces. In his 1889 work titled Self-Portrait with Halo, Paul Gauguin depicted himself as the Fallen Angel. The work was created at Marie Henry’s inn in Le Pouldu. Mr. Gauguin painted it in the dining room directly on wooden cupboard doors.

• In the first half of the 17^th century, Artemisia Gentileschi of Italy was a painter who knew her own worth. Once she sent a painting to a patron, along with this note: “This will show your Lordship what a woman can do.”

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Music, Names, Opinions, Painting

Music

• Music has no fans like punk fans. Richard Hell designed a T-shirt with a bull’s-eye target and the words “Please kill me” on it. Richard Lloyd, lead guitarist of the punk group Television, once wore the T-shirt. Some wild-eyed punk fans saw the T-shirt and told him, “If that’s what you want, we’ll be happy to oblige because we’re such big fans!” Immediately, Mr. Lloyd thought, “I am NOT wearing this shirt again.”

Names

• Dahlia Messick wanted to be a cartoonist, but she noticed that when she took her artwork around to the studios that the male decision-makers would only briefly look at her artwork but would ask her out to lunch. Therefore, she adopted the gender-neutral name Dale Messick and started mailing her artwork to studios. Eventually, she created the very successful comic strip Brenda Starr, Reporter.

• In 1969, Charlie Brown and Snoopy became the mascots of the Apollo 10 Lunar exploration crew. The lunar module received the nickname “Snoopy,” and the command module received the nickname “Charlie Brown.” When the lunar module and the command module had redocked, the astronauts reported to Mission Control, “Snoopy and Charlie Brown are hugging each other.”

• Magazines aren’t always totally honest about who writes for them. For example, early in its history, Ms.magazine published a comic strip titled Mary Selfworth. Supposedly, the comic strip was written and drawn by Vincenza Colletta; however, the real writer and drawer was a Marvel cartoonist named Vincent Colletta.

• Neysa McMein was a painter whose career went nowhere when she painted under her real name, Marjorie Moran McMein. After she changed her name to the one suggested by a numerologist, she became successful.

Opinions

• Many Impressionist artists painted landscapes outdoors, but Edgar Degas preferred to paint indoor scenes of entertainers such as ballet dancers or singers. A landscape artist once asked him whether such subjects were suitable for art, and Mr. Degas replied, “For you, natural life is necessary; for me, artificial life.” (Actually, Mr. Degas disliked painters who worked outdoors. He once said, “If I were in the government, I would have a brigade of policemen assigned to keeping an eye on people who paint landscapes outdoors. Oh, I wouldn’t want anyone killed. I’d be satisfied with just a few buckshot to begin with.”)

• Cathy Guisewite, the creator of the comic strip Cathy, keeps an 8-Ball — one of those contraptions that answers questions with “Yes,” “No,” “Maybe,” and so on — in her office. She says that although it doesn’t make decisions for her, “It’s good to get a second opinion.”

Painting

• Mexican artist Diego Rivera well remembered the first time he saw a painting by Paul Cézanne. While in Paris, Mr. Rivera passed a gallery that had a painting by Mr. Cézanne displayed in a window. Mr. Rivera looked at the painting for one hour, then for another hour. The owner of the gallery saw Mr. Rivera looking at the painting, so he put a different painting by Mr. Cézanne on display in the window. Mr. Rivera looked at that painting for hours, so the art gallery owner placed a third painting by Mr. Cézanne on display. Mr. Rivera was still looking at the painting when closing time for the gallery came, so the owner then placed several paintings by Mr. Cézanne in the window and went home. Mr. Rivera stayed yet longer to look at the paintings, getting soaked in a rainstorm. When he went home, he was feverish, and visions of paintings by Mr. Cézanne kept running through his head. Some of the paintings were real; some were imaginary.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Museums, Music

Museums

• In the first half of the 1800s, George Catlin sought to paint Native Americans and Native American culture before the West was tamed and their way of life was lost. Later, he sought to sell his Indian Gallery collection of paintings and artifacts of Native American life to the United States government but failed. However, much of his collection ended up in the Smithsonian anyway, donated to it by the heirs of Joseph Harrison, who purchased the Indian Gallery after it was sold to pay Mr. Catlin’s debts. Ironically, it is a good thing that the U.S. government did not buy the Indian Gallery when it was offered for sale earlier. If the Indian Gallery had been put in the Smithsonian before 1865, it would have been burned up in a great fire that destroyed the Smithsonian building that year. By the way, although this next anecdote is not funny, it illustrates how much one artist valued art: George Catlin made it his mission paint Native Americans and Native American, and he took his mission seriously. One day, after he had wounded a bull bison, he began to make sketches of it. After the wounded bull, near death, fell down, he threw his hat at it and harassed it until it got up again. He felt that such harassment of a dying animal was justified in order to make authentic sketches of the bison. Also by the way, in the old days, Western cowboys did not particularly care for people who didn’t dress like them. A young man newly arrived from Boston once entered a saloon in a Western town while wearing a suit and patent leather shoes. A few minutes later, he emerged with a dazed look, wearing an undershirt and one sock. The cowboys inside had resented his clothing, ordered him to buy a round of drinks, and when he said that all he had was 25 cents, had stripped him and pawned his clothes to pay for the drinks.

• For many years, Carl Fabergé created an Easter egg for the Czar of Russia to give to his wife. Each Easter egg, when opened, contained a surprise, such as a model of the Czar’s private train or a model of the Czar’s yacht or a model of the coach that the Czarina had ridden in to a coronation. The surprise was a surprise to everyone, even to the Czar, who had commissioned the work of art. Once the Czar asked Mr. Fabergé what surprise he was planning, and Mr. Fabergé would tell him only, “Your Imperial majesty will be satisfied.” He was. (By the way, a woman once asked Mr. Fabergé this silly question: “What shape will your eggs have this year?” He joked, “Madam, this year they will be square!”) Today, any museum with a Fabergé Easter egg is a proud museum.

• Many horticulturalists work at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. They care for the plants used in the exhibits, and they sometimes notice things in paintings that other people don’t notice. For example, Rembrandt Peale’s portrait of Rubens Peale, his teenage brother, includes a geranium. Museum horticulturalists look at the painting and wish that Rubens Peale would water the geranium.

Music

• Throughout his life, jazz musician Louis Armstrong made collages about events that were important to him. Many of his collages concerned events from his personal life, but other collages were about events that made history. For example, one collage was created from newspaper clippings telling how Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in modern major-league professional baseball. A study of the collages, many of which are on display at Queens College in New York City, shows that Mr. Armstrong followed closely the advances African Americans were making in civil rights.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Money, Mothers

Money

• In 1962, Andy Warhol exhibited his paintings of Campbell’s soup cans at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, California, charging $100 for each painting. An owner of a different, nearby art gallery saw the exhibit, was amused, and purchased several cans of Campbell’s soup that he sold at his own gallery. The price of three cans was sixty cents, and a sign at the gallery advertised, “Buy them cheaper here.”

• James McNeill Whistler gave his paintings names such as Arrangement in Black and White. The secretary of his London club, wishing for Mr. Whistler to pay his long overdue membership fees, sent him this letter: “Dear Mr. Whistler: It is not a ‘Nocturne in Purple’ or a ‘Symphony in Blue and Grey’ we are after, but an ‘Arrangement in Gold and Silver.’” Mr. Whistler paid the money he owed.

• Mary Cassatt sometimes bullied her rich friends into buying art. One day, as she and multimillionaire James Stillman were looking at a painting by Diego Velasquez in René Gimpel’s art gallery, she told him, “Buy it. It’s shameful to be rich like you. Such a purchase will redeem you.” He bought the painting.

• As a movie producer, Louis B. Mayer was always interested in the bottom line. Once, Gottfried Reinhardt wanted to make a movie that Mr. Mayer felt had no commercial potential, so Mr. Mayer said to Mr. Reinhardt, “You want to be an artist, but you want other people to starve for your art.”

• Pablo Picasso often painted over the white walls of the apartments where he lived, turning them into works of art. Early in Picasso’s career, an angry landlord forced him to pay to have a wall painted again. Years later, Picasso said, “What a fool. He could have sold the wall for a fortune.”

• Wilson Mizner once owned a store that sold reproductions of masterpiece paintings. After being offered $50 for a reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper, he replied, “No, sir. It’s worth ten dollars a plate, and I’m charging a hundred for the whole thing.”

• Before World War II, Lord Sandwich visited an art gallery owned by Lucy Carrington Wertheim. He liked what he saw very much, but remarked that although he would like to buy some pictures from her, “Alas! I’ll have to wait until I’ve paid my income tax.”

Mothers

• Cathy Guisewite, creator of the comic strip Cathy, became a successful cartoonist partly because of her mother. Ms. Guisewite used to send cartoons to her mother, who was so impressed that she researched a list of syndicates for her daughter to contact. Ms. Guisewite was afraid that her mother would contact the syndicates if she did not, so on April 12, 1976, she mailed a letter and some cartoons to Universal Press Syndicate. The executives there looked over her cartoons, discussed them, and 90 minutes after opening her package decided to syndicate her cartoon. Later, Ms. Guisewite joked that she had been “forced by mother to send humiliating drawings of my miserable love life to Universal Press Syndicate.”

• When world-famous window dresser Simon Doonan was four years old, he threw his mother’s bras out the window. When she asked him why he had done that, he replied, “Because they flutter.” (Young Simon was effeminate and gay and interested in fabulous fashion. At the circus, he saw some ladies wearing fabulous and glittery costumes with plumes and asked his mother, “Why can’t you dress like that?”)

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Money

Money

• When Andy Warhol was a successful commercial artist, but wanted to become a successful fine artist, he asked Muriel Latow, a friend and interior decorator, for her advice. However, her advice was not free. She asked for $50, and Mr. Warhol wrote her a check for $50. She then asked what he loved most in the world. The answer came back: “Money.” Therefore, Ms. Latow advised him to paint money, and she also advised him to paint something that no one ever noticed because they were so familiar with it — “Something like a can of Campbell’s soup.” Mr. Warhol took her advice, and he remains famous as a pioneer of Pop Art.

• To become an artist requires a great amount of effort over a great period of time. While on the witness stand during an action he had instituted against the critic John Ruskin, James McNeill Whistler was asked how long it had taken him to produce a certain painting. When the lawyer for the defense heard that Mr. Whistler had produced the painting in two days, he asked him, “The labor of two days, then, is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?” Mr. Whistler replied, “No, I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime.”

• As a young man, African-American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner taught at Clark University in Atlanta, Georgia. Bishop and Mrs. Joseph Crane Hartzell took an interest in Mr. Tanner and his works of art and held an exhibition of his paintings. Unfortunately, the people who attended the exhibition purchased none of the paintings. Therefore, the Hartzells bought every painting. This raised enough money for Mr. Tanner to go to Paris, France, and study painting at the Academie Julien.

• African-American artist Romare Bearden received money for attending his first year of college by working at a speakeasy during Prohibition. His job was collecting money from the waiters whose job was selling liquor. When the speakeasy was held up, the robber didn’t get much money because most of the money was in Mr. Bearden’s pants pockets. His boss was so happy that he gave Mr. Bearden a bonus — enough money to pay for his first year of college.

• When Japanese painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai went bankrupt, he worried about getting art supplies. Sometimes he walked 15 miles after dark to Edo, where he would buy his art supplies while trying to stay hidden from anyone to whom he owed money. Nevertheless, he was unimpressed by anyone who had lots of money. Sometimes, he would keep a wealthy art collector waiting while he picked fleas off his clothing.

• The young Pablo Picasso was in a junk shop one day when he came across a painting by Henri Rousseau and bought it. The junk dealer didn’t think much of the painting and thought Picasso was buying it only to paint over the canvas, and so Picasso was able to buy the painting for approximately a dollar. The painting, Portrait of a Woman, is on display at the Musée Picasso in Paris — it is worth mega-bucks.

• Sir David Wilkie sold his painting Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo for 1,000 guineas to the Duke of Wellington, who began to count out the banknotes. Sir David suggested that it might be easier to write out a draft on a banker, but the Duke of Wellington replied, “I don’t want my bankers to know that I have been such a d*mned fool as to give 1,000 guineas for a painting.”

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Art — Money

Money

• Carl Fabergé created many works of art for the Russian Imperial family, including his famous Easter eggs, but working for royalty did have its disadvantages. Alexandra, wife of Czar Nicholas, occasionally wanted Mr. Fabergé to create a piece of jewelry for her, so she would send a drawing to him along with a statement of how much she was willing to pay to have the artwork created. Unfortunately, she did not know much about goldsmithing, so Mr. Fabergé was often obliged to alter her drawing and her piece of jewelry. In addition, Mr. Fabergé sometimes took a loss in manufacturing one of her pieces of jewelry — no one would dare to suggest that the Czarina pay a higher price than the one she had suggested! Fortunately, Mr. Fabergé was able to make up the losses with the other work that he created for the Russian imperial family. (For example, Nicholas once gave Alexandra a diamond necklace that cost 166,500 rubles, and his parents once gave her a 267-pearl necklace that cost 171,600 rubles. Mr. Fabergé made both necklaces, and each necklace cost the equivalent of several hundred thousand dollars.)

• While growing up, country comedian Archie Campbell liked to draw, and he quickly discovered that he enjoyed creating art a whole lot better than doing heavy farm work. As a youngster, he once worked an entire day pulling hay for 75 cents. The next day, he was so sore that he couldn’t go to work and pull hay. That turned out to be a lucky break, because a neighbor lady asked him to paint a picture on her wall. Archie painted the picture in three hours, and the neighbor lady was so pleased that she gave him $3 — a lot of money in those days. Archie raced home and told his mother that he had made in three hours as an artist what he would have made in four days as a hay puller. He also said that he was going to make his living as an artist. Things didn’t quite work out that way, as Archie first became a country musician, then made it big as a country comedian, but he kept on painting — mostly as a hobby but occasionally as a source of income.

• One would expect that the owner of an art gallery would be very aware of how much money a customer has available to spend on art, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Before World War II, Lucy Carrington Wertheimer ran an art gallery that concentrated on the work of then-modern artists. One day, a well-dressed woman expressed interest in a work of art by L.D. Rust — a drawing of a horse, which she wanted for her little son’s room. Ms. Wertheim named the price, but the well-dressed woman returned the drawing to the portfolio. Because Ms. Wertheim thought that the price had been too high for the woman, she reduced it, and the well-dressed woman bought the drawing. Ms. Wertheim then discovered that the well-dressed woman was Barbara Hutton, Countess Reventlow, who at the time was the richest woman in the world.

• Edna Hibel showed much talent early in her career, and of course people wanted to buy her paintings early in her career, causing a kind of crisis because she did not want to sell them. However, she talked to her art teacher, Professor Karl Zerbe, who gave her good advice. He told her that if she thought she could paint a better painting, then she ought to sell a painting she had already created, but if she thought she could not create a better painting, then she ought to hold on to the painting she thought was best. Of course, Ms. Hibel always thought she could create a better painting, so she began to sell her paintings. She says, “I hope I can always do better! Letting go of what I consider my best work is much easier when I remember Karl Zerbe’s remarks.”

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