We Two Create

🇬🇧 A gallery show got shut down by police after two days — because of the paintings.
In 1917, Amedeo Modigliani exhibited a series of n**e paintings at a Paris gallery.
The frank depiction of p***c hair scandalized authorities.
Police ordered the show closed within 48 hours.
Only two drawings had sold by that point.
Nearly a century later, in 2015, one of those same reclining n**es sold at Christie's for $170.4 million.
Modigliani died in poverty the following year, at 35, from tubercular meningitis.
He never lived to see a single one of his paintings sell for more than a few hundred francs.

🇮🇹 Da Vinci's most famous painting might not even show the real smile.
The Mona Lisa was painted between 1503 and 1519, and Leonardo kept it with him until his death.
It measures just 30×21 inches — smaller than most people expect in person.
The technique behind her expression is called "sfumato" — soft transitions with no harsh outlines.
It's part of why her smile seems to change depending on the angle you view her from.
The painting was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by a former employee.
It stayed missing for two years before turning up in Italy.
That theft is part of why it became the most famous painting on Earth — the mystery made headlines worldwide.

🇺🇸 A performance artist shot a Warhol — with a real gun.
Andy Warhol created his "Marilyn" silkscreen series in the 1960s, using the same publicity photo of Marilyn Monroe repeated across colored canvases.
One day, performance artist Dorothy Podber walked into Warhol's studio, The Factory.
She pulled out a revolver and fired a single shot through a stack of the paintings, between the eyes.
Warhol reportedly banned her from The Factory afterward.
The bullet-holed works survived and became known as the "Shot Marilyns."
One of them, "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn," later sold for $195 million in 2022.
The bullet hole is still visible in some versions today.

🇨🇳 A 62-year-old man became the first Chinese artist to sell for $100 million.
Qi Baishi painted twelve landscape ink screens after years traveling the Chinese countryside.
On December 17, 2017, they sold at Poly Auction Beijing for RMB 931.5 million — about $140.8 million.
He made them as a gift for a prominent Beijing doctor who had treated him.
Qi Baishi started as a carpenter, largely self-taught in painting.
He didn't gain wide recognition until his 60s.
He lived to 93, one of the most prolific painters in Chinese history.
His work remains the benchmark for Chinese art at auction.

🇫🇷 A urinal changed the definition of art forever.
In 1917, Marcel Duchamp submitted a porcelain urinal to an art exhibition, signed "R. Mutt."
He titled it "Fountain."
The exhibition committee rejected it, even though the show claimed to accept anything.
Duchamp argued the artist's choice to designate an object as art was the art itself.
The original was lost within months.
Later replicas now sit in major museums, including the Tate and MoMA.
In 2004, a survey of 500 art experts voted it the most influential artwork of the 20th century.
A urinal beat Picasso's "Guernica" for that title.

🇺🇸 During his lifetime, Vincent van Gogh sold exactly one painting.
It was "The Red Vineyard," sold in 1890 for 400 francs — roughly $2,000 today.
He died the same year, at 37, having produced over 2,000 works.
Today, his paintings routinely sell for tens of millions of dollars.
"Portrait of Dr. Gachet" sold privately in 1990 for $82.5 million.
Van Gogh spent his final years in and out of a psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy.
He painted "The Starry Night" from the window of his room there.
He never knew any of what his work would become.