According to surging news reports, in an important exhibition at the Düsseldorf Museum of Art in Germany, the staff found that an abstract painting called "New York City No. 1" was actually hung upside down, and it has been hung upside down for 77 years, and no one has found it.
Upstream News notes that this is not the first time abstract art and modern art have been "misunderstood". For ordinary people, these "incomprehensible" works of art are lucky to be hung upside down. Previously, there have been embarrassing incidents in which artists' works have been thrown away as garbage, and some fashion media even joked that the hardest profession in the world is a cleaner in an art museum.
The reverse painting will not be corrected back for the time being
The painting is an abstract painting by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian in 1941 and is currently on display at the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf.
"In a photograph from 1944, I saw that the canvas of the painting was opposite to the easel, which caught my attention." Exhibition curator Suzanne Meyer Busser said, "The painting consists of red, yellow and blue lines that intersect at right angles. A year later, in 1945, it was placed on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and since then, it has been hung upside down, in the wrong direction. Later, when the painting was sent to the Düsseldorf Museum in 1980, it hung in the same wrong way. ”
Curator Busser with New York City 1 (which hangs upside down).
According to Busser, the error may stem from the fact that the painting does not have the artist's autograph on it, so its orientation was determined by the name of the artist engraved on the back of the frame by the estate administrator when Mondrian died in 1944.
The correct way to hang "New York City 1".
Although all the evidence suggests that the painting is currently hanging upside down, it will not be flipped back for the time being. "The tape in this painting is already very loose and hung by a thread, and if we flip it now, gravity will pull it in the other direction," Busser said. This 'mistake' is now part of the history of the painting. ”
Born in 1872, Pete Mondrian was one of the leading figures of the Dutch art movement "style", known for his horizontal and vertical lines and the use of primary colors in his paintings. In 1940, Mondrian left for the United States and settled in New York. The rectilinear grid in his paintings is inspired by the layout and skyscrapers of American cities.
Another famous painting was also hung upside down
This isn't the first time the Museum of Modern Art in New York has hung a reverse piece.
In 1961, MoMA exhibited the last work created by artist Henri Matisse, The Boat, and while on display, a stockbroker named Genevieve Hubbert noticed that the paper-cut "The Boat" was hanging upside down.
Pierre Matisse, the museum staff, more than 10,000 visitors and the artist's son, were unaware of the mistake.
After several visits to the exhibition and buying a catalogue, Hubbert confirmed that she was right, but she told museum staff and was ridiculed. After that, she contacted the media to report that the paper-cut work had been reversed in the exhibition. After the newspaper, the MoMA curators revisited and eventually re-hung the work in the right way. Pierre Matisse believed that "Hubbert deserved a medal".
Works of art that were treated as "garbage" in those years
In 2004, a Tate Modern cleaner saw a plastic bag containing old newspapers and torn cardboard in the exhibition hall and picked it up and threw it away. This bag of dilapidated and old garbage actually belongs to German artist Gustav Metzger's 1960 work "Reborn Self-Destruction Art First Public Exhibition". In this installation, a table is set in front of the abstract painting, and a plastic bag containing garbage is placed next to the table.
Gustav Metzger's First Public Exhibition of Reborn Self-Destructive Art, 1960.
After the artwork was treated as garbage, the Tate Modern dealt with it by saying that in addition to the artist himself coming to replace it with a new plastic bag, the museum also conducted special training for all staff to remind all non-art professionals such as cleaners, security guards, and mechanics to pay attention to distinguishing garbage and artwork in the museum, and the important difference between them is that artworks will be covered at night.
Also making the cleaners can't help cleaning is the white ash in Martin Kippenberg's basin. In 2011, at the Ostwa Museum in Dortmund, Germany, cleaners wiped the white powder from the black basin of Kippenberg's installation "When It Starts Drip from the Ceiling." These "dirty" have been insured and will pay 690,000 euros if they are wiped.
In 2014, in southern Italy, modern artist Paul Branca's elaborate work was swept away by a cleaning lady who thought it was just rubbish left behind during the exhibition.
Part of the artist's work Photo: Bazaar Art
Yes, it's really just rubbish – waste newspapers, pieces of paper, broken biscuits "arranged" on the floor as a way for the artist to express his thoughts on the environment, and the pile is worth $15,000.
Coincidentally, another piece of modern art that has been cleaned up as trash is Where We Go to Dance Tonight, which consists of empty wine bottles scattered around the floor and confetti of paper to reflect the hedonism of Italy in the 80s.
Where are we going to dance tonight Photo: Bazaar Art
The exhibition opened on the evening of October 23, and the next day when workers cleaned up the venue, they threw away empty bottles of wine on display as garbage. Afterwards, the curator embarrassingly said that he would immediately send someone to find and reset the discarded artwork.
In 1999, when Trish Emin's concept work My Bed was shown at the museum, an audience member thought the bed was messed up, cleaned up the bed and folded the quilt.
Trish Emin "My Bed"
It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the unexpected and art, especially modern art. The story of Costa Rican artist Tatiana Fernández is a case in point. In 2008, while exhibiting her work at the Royal College of Art, a visitor accidentally bumped into a 9-foot-tall ceramic sculpture. According to witnesses at the scene, at first people seemed to think that the hundreds of pieces were also part of the exhibition, "so they started taking pictures, and the scene was really interesting."
Upstream news synthesizes China News Network, The Paper, Bazaar Art, New Weekly
Edit Liu Deng
Responsible editor Wang Rong Guan Yi
Review by Feng Fei