Kicking off this week with a wee quiz, and by no means simple I have to admit. As with the headline of this column all you have to do is find the common denominator that links the following list of words.
Now some of you will know the answer straightaway while most of you, like myself, won’t have a pup’s notion. And then we’ll have the Mensa Brigade who, thanks to their high IQs, will more than likely figure it out (and fair dues to them) or at least make a good stab at it.
But enough aul’ guff, off we go: Cyclone, Bramble, Gauze, Scullery, Masquerade, Spring Tide; Heathcliff, Nancy’s Blushes, Scree, Livid, and as per the headline Callan, Cordoba and Connecticut. Oh, and Bambie Thug. Actually forget that – not a clue, nothing to do with the quiz it’s just that as I write Bambie Thug has made it to the final of the Eurovision Song Contest and I am truly delighted for her. And relieved. For Ireland. For us. We are after all a nation of songsters, songs and music (not that Bamie Thug quite fits the bill for me). But I’m glad she’s in there in the final mix).
Back to the quiz: any idea what the connection is? They are all, believe it or not, shades of paint! the stuff you put on your walls. As it happens we’re doing a spot of painting at the moment and there are paint brochures to beat the band lying around the house. And I don’t ‘know who comes up with the names for these shades of paint but they are quite poetic; these advertising folk should, I reckon, be writing odes or sonnets. Or colourful novels!
Staying (sticking?) with paint and quizzing have a go at the following: name the artists who painted these famous canvasses? Now it starts out easy but it gets progressively more challenging. Get them all right and you should immediately get yourself on the Board of the Butler Gallery, the Board of the National Gallery even.
If perchance you know none of them – you need to get out more – a lot more; I suggest you start with the Louvre (in Paris by the way).
And away we go: 1 The Mona Lisa; 2 Sunflowers; 3 The Scream; 4 Girl with a Pearl Earring; 5 The Kiss; 6 Nighthawks; 7 Guernica ; 8 The Liffey Swim; 9 The Fighting Temeraire; 10 The Water Lily Pond; 11 Campbell’s Soup Cans; 12 Dancers in Blue; 13 The Hay Wain; 14 Launching the Currach; 15 A Convent Garden; 16 The Laughing Cavalier; 17 The Taking of Christ 18 The Birth of Venus; 19 The Night Watch; 20 The Creation of Adam. Answers below.
In 1961, the painting Le Bateau (The Boat) by French artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) hung in New York’s Museum of Modern Art fort for forty-seven days before someone noticed it was hanging upside down! Approximately 116,000 people passed in front of the famous work of art before the error was spotted! An inexperienced assistant in an art gallery accidentally dropped a priceless painting, ripping the canvas.
“You imbecile,” the director shouted at him (never!) “That painting is over four hundred years old.”
“Whew,” said the assistant, “Lucky it wasn’t a new one.”
And, finally, a couple visited an art gallery to look at some paintings (what else, says you). One of the paintings was of a beautiful naked woman with only a little green foliage covering her appropriate parts. The wife thought the work was in bad taste and quickly moved on but the husband lingered, completely transfixed. “What are you waiting for?” called his wife. “Autumn?”
Answers
1 Leonardo da Vinci 2 Vincent Van Gogh 3 Edvard Munch 4 Jan Vermeer 5 Gustave Klimt 6 Edward Hopper 7 Pablo Picasso 8 Jack B Yeats 9 William Turner 10 Claude Monet 11 Andy Warhol 12 Edgar Degas 13 John Constable 14 Paul Henry 15 William Leech 16 Franz Hals.17 Caravaggio 18 Boticelli 19 Rembrandt 20 Michelangelo. Ten correct – Good; fifteen – very good. Anything over fifteen – excellent. Give yourself a clap on the back and go paint the town red!
