The Biggest Drawing In The World.
posted by Armitage Shanks on May 23, 2008 - 82 comments

Darko Maver: In 1999, An artist is killed in his prison cell in Podgorica.

Early works. Writings. Culminating exhibit. His arrest. His death. [more inside]
posted by klangklangston on Jan 17, 2008 - 13 comments

Alison Jackson takes paparazzi shots of celebrity lookalikes. (NSFW) [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 19, 2007 - 8 comments

Parting the Veil of Faery: The Colmore Fatagravures, said to date from the 1890s. "A Scottish adventurer, inventor, and photographer named Neville Colmore claimed to have constructed a device capable of '...parting the veil of Faery...' The device, which he called the Spectobarathrum, along with all of the images he claimed to have made were believed destroyed in a fire. I believe some of these images and related artefacts may have survived." [via Apothecary's Drawer]
posted by mediareport on Jun 19, 2007 - 16 comments

The great Nat Tate hoax. 9 years ago, writer William Boyd and singer David Bowie (easily two of the coolest persons alive) joined forces to perpetrate one of the most elaborate art hoaxes to date: the "rediscovery" of Nat Tate, American Artist. A Boyd-penned biography was bombastically presented in Jeff Koons' gallery (who wasn't in on the joke)...to be enthusiastically lapped up by NYC's glitteratti. If only they had bothered to check the date...
posted by Skeptic on Apr 1, 2007 - 63 comments

A hoax that embarrassed the art world: Pavel Jerdanowitch and the Disumbrationist School of Painting . This "joke on the art critics" was perpetrated by Paul Jordan-Smith, a former pastor who had left his calling after being charged with heresy. He went on to become a writer, editor and journalist, and in 1924 he decided to commit blasphemy against "the strange gods of modern art." The Pavel Jerdanowitch Painting Contest was inspired by the hoax. "The challenge is to produce the worst painting every painted." It's not too late to submit your own entry for 2007. You can check out last year's entries, including the "loser" (winner), for inspiration.
posted by amyms on Mar 24, 2007 - 35 comments

"This was painted by a person with a rare and severe mental disorder. He was constantly seeing his own fantasies all around him. He also had a certain phobia..." (via Digg). The image is an imperfect reproduction of a particular postcard dated 1972. A blogger (in Russian) claims his psychiatry professor found one aspect of this eerie painting that reveals the patient's disorder. Allegedly, only one of his students in the past 15 years has figured it out. The psychoanalytic mystery has piqued the interest (in Russian) of the online community. A number of supplemental hints from the professor and thousands of guesses later, the case remains unsolved. Skeptics have already decried the mystery as a traffic-boosting hoax, but a few signs still point to its authenticity. Most notably, the artist's reproduction of another classic painting contains the following note: "transferred in 1990 from Moscow mental hospital."
posted by themadjuggler on Dec 3, 2006 - 113 comments

kama3d ~ Made by an anonymous French artist, this series of sculptures of kama sutra positions was supposedly exhibited at the Chambéry Modern Art Museum (Musée d'Art et d'Histoire) recently. Now you can virtually walk around them. Reminscent of that sculpture of Britney giving birth on a bearskin. But are they real? *NSFW* (Note: FLASH)
posted by crunchland on Jul 13, 2006 - 36 comments

Sugar babies made of marzipan.
posted by crunchland on Apr 3, 2006 - 33 comments

There's Someone at the Door, He Says He's From the Future. "Two men spend two years making a random 18-year-old gamer the subject of their art project, in which he is informed he is the savior of the future human race." Hoax as art. [via snarkout sideout, a bit more, previously noted here :]
posted by kliuless on Feb 19, 2005 - 22 comments