Museum pays artist $84K — he delivers 2 blank canvases titled ‘Take the Money and Run’

Denmark's Kunsten Museum of Modern Art was epically hoodwinked after giving artist Jens Haaning $84,000 to use in a piece -- only to have him pocket the cash and turn in blank canvases cheekily entitled "Take the Money and Run."

Just in case you thought charging $120,000 for a banana was highway robbery, a Danish museum gave an artist $84,000 to use in a commissioned piece — only to have him pocket the cash and turn in two blank canvases cheekily entitled “Take the Money and Run.”

“The work is that I have taken their money,” the nada-Vinci told Danish radio program “P1 Morgen” last week of the irreverent performance piece and mega-minimalist work. “It’s not theft. It is a breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of the work.”

As for the $84,000, Hanning “hasn’t broke any contract yet,” Andersson said, since repayment isn’t due until early next year. However, he specified that if the money is not returned by then, the museum will “take the necessary steps to ensure that” the provocateur coughs up the cash.

Alphonse Allais - List of works

First Communion of Anaemic Young Girls in the Snow, 1883

Apoplectic Cardinals Harvesting Tomatoes on the Shore of the Red Sea (Study of the Aurora Borealis), 1884

Band of Greyfriars in the Fog (Band Of Dusty Drunks In The Fog), 1884

Negroes Fighting in a Tunnel by Night, 1884

The Awe of Navy Recruits Seeing for the First Time Your Blue, O Mediterranean Sea!, 1884

Jaundiced Cuckolds Handling Ochre, 1884

Some Pimps, Known as Green Backs, on their Bellies in the Grass, Drinking Absinthe, 1884

Allais was a humorist, not a scam artist.

The $30 million monstrosity shown in post #21 was the product of sick minds, both of the artist (Jean-Michel Basquiat) and those who paid money for the painting. The rest of his body of work is just as hideous.

I have heard on more than one occasion that the reason for such outrageous sale prices is the facilitation of money laundering.

I really do like the “Dogs Playing Poker” series, both for the quality of the work and the whimsical subject matter. At least a few of the originals have sold in the mid to high 6-figure price range and well worth it, considering.

Also, see Jessie Waters at the “Art Basel” show...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7p24P0j6ac

—”Why do they call this one “Blue poles” when the poles clearly appear as black lines.”

They look black to me too?
I checked my monitor settings, looks OK.
Still black?

But I did find some locations for the famous footprints!
Still cannot see them?

Perhaps I have become blind over time?

The owner’s description, they should know?:

(Jackson Pollock, 10-29 November 1952) where it was titled Number 11, 1952. Pollock’s decision to forego conventional descriptive titles and simply number his paintings, including the year of their execution...

We were drinking. We decided to paint something together...
And then I laid the wax paper over the squiggles because they were just lines, and I walked on the paper. I flattened the paint out, and then I took the waxed paper off. And Jackson said, ‘So that’s the way you do it. Here’s how I do it,’ end he took a pot of Duco that was black and threw the paint on. It turned out a sort of bilious green. And then we started to lay it on. We were drinking. The paint ended up a half-inch thick on the canvas. You can see it. We took off our shoes because we were walking on it. Jackson was using glass tubes filled with paint. They were basting tubes, with rubber bulbs on one end and about an eighth-of-an-inch opening. But he was gripping the bulbs so hard — because he was in this state — that they clogged. He would throw them down and they would break. So he broke them all...

In several places around the edge of the canvas there are footprints in the dark green and black of the first layer of paint. In most cases the imprint is of shoes and in one case at least, the imprint of a bare foot (top right).

...and basting syringes, he’d begin. His control was amazing. Using a stick was difficult enough but the basting syringe was like a giant fountain pen. With it he had to control the flow of ink [paint], as well as his gesture. He used to buy those syringes by the dozen.

/////Pollock then left the canvas alone for quite some time, for when he next worked on the painting, having decided to paint in the blue poles, it can be seen how the blue paint rides over the thick ridges of the earlier paint layers without any blurring of these, indicating that they were quite dry by that time.\\\\\

\\\\Pollock integrated the poles by blurring their edges and introducing swathes of black paint that tug at the poles as if caught in a tide. The poles are laced into the composition with fine dripped skeins of white, black and blue paint/////

https://nga.gov.au/international/catalogue/detail.cfm?IRN=36334

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

Although it was one of the last major paintings made by Pollock, Blue poles recalls the compositional teachings of his earliest teacher and mentor, Thomas Hart Benton, who emphasised the idea of a vertical structure that anchors a spiralling form. Added towards the end of the painting process,
-——////the strong blue-black poles\\\\——
were formed by pressing the wet edge of a painted length of wood onto the canvas surface. These thick, insistent lines were then overlaid with additional flung lines of cream, tangerine and black paint.

https://bluepoles.nga.gov.au/artwork/blue-poles/

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