29th September 1955: Spanish painter Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) in his villa 'La Californie' at Cannes. (Photo by George Stroud/Express/Getty Images) (This content is subject to copyright.)
Some of Pablo Picasso’s work is just crap … literally.
According to a new book, the famed Spanish artist once used the excrement of his then-3-year-old daughter Maya to paint an apple in a 1938 still life.
Sounds like one unappetizing apple!
The use of fecal matter in fine art is not unheard of – painter Chris Ofili caused a ruckus when he used elephant excrement in his 1996 painting “The Holy Virgin Mary” – but Picasso’s use of his family’s feces is shocking given the Spanish artist’s fame.
The revolting revelation was told to authors Thomas Girst and Magnus Resch for their new book “100 Secrets of the Art World” by Picasso’s granddaughter Diana Widmaier Picasso.
“According to him, excrement from an infant breast-fed by its mother had a unique texture and ocher color,” Widmaier Picasso said in the book, according to the New York Post. “The revulsion that this material might provoke is instead transformed into amazement as we grasp the full imagination of the artist.”
The book also reveals secrets from other esteemed artists such as Jeff Koons, Marina Abramovic, Larry Gagosian and Zaha Hadid.
Pop artist Andy Warhol made a series of works where he urinated on a canvas covered with metallic paint to cause oxidation, while the abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock was rumored to have urinated on finished paintings before delivering them to art dealers he did not like.
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