Paintings by famed chimp to go on sale

Congo the chimpanzee learned to draw at two years old when his owner, artist and ethologist Desmond Morris, gave him a pencil and a piece of card. He soon noticed that the ape could draw a circle and had a basic sense of composition. Congo made around 400 artworks during his lifetime, and rose to fame in the late 1950s as the star of British TV show Zootime.

A painting by Congo

His abstract, expressionist paintings have previously caught the interest of Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. And now Desmond is selling his collection of the chimp's artworks at London's Mayor Gallery. The 55 paintings, which will be priced between £1,500 ($1,850) and £6,000 each ($7,400), will be on view from December 3 through 19.

From artnet:

"No other apes were controlling the mark making and varying the patterns as he was,” Morris explains in a statement. "I originally picked Congo out as one of the more boisterous at the zoo and felt that his strong personality would respond well to focused periods of working together."

What started out as scribbly lines and splotches of paint soon turned into carefully crafted compositions that demonstrated a formal logic without having an obvious analog to the real world. Just as Pollack, de Kooning, and Kline were exploring the limits of pictorial abstraction, so too was a three-year-old chimpanzee.

Congo died at ten years of age in 1964 after suffering from tuberculosis.

Comments

Weirdly Charming

If you’re a fan of art that makes you do a double-take, you need to check out Richard Brener . Based in the UK, Richard is an internationally collected artist who works primarily with ink, fineliners, and gouache. When you first see his pieces, they actually look pretty playful. Then you realize the entire canvas is packed with thousands of tiny, ghost-like shapes he calls "champs." They’re all squeezed together like commuters on a rush-hour train, and the level of detail is honestly mind-blowing. Richard spends hundreds of hours drawing these little guys over and over. It’s obsessive, very intentional, and a little bit wild. The cool part is that the longer you stare, the more the vibe shifts. Check out more photos below:

Sheri DeBow's Strange Dolls

These dolls by artist Sheri DeBow are hardly something you would buy for a child. Each piece is one of a kind, and people who love to collect strange, creepy, or gothic dolls will surely love her creations. Sheri studied painting and drawing and took sculpture courses at Napa Valley College in California. She says her inspiration comes from dreams, books, love for history and general life experiences, good and bad. To see more of Sheri's work, follow her on Instagram .

Where Bad Space and Good Music Collided

My first apartment was in Malate, and calling it “small” would be generous. I lived there with two girls and one guy, and to this day, I genuinely don’t know how we all fit. It felt like a magic trick. Or a health hazard. We were a musical mess. One roommate lived and breathed ’70s classics. Another was permanently blasting Korn and Slipknot. One survived solely on cheesy love songs. And me? I was floating somewhere between new wave and folk rock, pretending that made sense. Somehow, despite the noise and the chaos, we all lived together in this weird, mismatched harmony. No murders. No lawsuits. A win, honestly. My music taste now is nothing like it was in my twenties. Not even close. But I’ll always be grateful to Jacqueline for introducing me to this song in particular. It was playing when I woke up from a very memorable sleep in 2002. I was 21, half-awake, probably confused about life, and that song stuck. It still hasn’t let go.

finding cain

Search This Blog