MODERN ART PAINTING FOUND TO BE HANGING UPSIDE DOWN FOR DECADES

It’s been discovered that a painting by abstract Dutch artist Piet Mondrian has been hanging upside down in various museums since it was first put on display 75 years ago. The 1941 picture – really just a bunch of red, yellow, black and blue adhesive tape in square patterns titled “New York City I” – was first put on display at New York’s MoMA in 1945 but has hung in an art gallery in Düsseldorf, Germany, since 1980. The way the picture is currently hung shows the multicolored lines thickening at the bottom. However, when a curator started researching a new show on Mondrian, she realized the picture should have been hung the other way around. A photograph of Mondrian’s studio, taken a few days after the artist’s death, shows the picture sitting on an easel the other way up. Plus, a similar oil painting by the artist, similarly titled “New York City,” has the thickening of lines at the top. Why not just flip the painting around? The adhesive tapes are already extremely loose and they’re afraid moving it would cause them to fall off. Besides, they now say the upside-down story is part of the painting’s legend.
* Another story from the topsy-turvy world of art.
* It’s kind of embarrassing to say, but Mondrian was never well hung.
* If only there was somebody on the planet who could delicately reglue adhesive tapes onto a piece of canvas.
* Honestly, I think Martha Stewart could handle it.
* Use it in the marketing: “You’ll FLIP when you see the new Mondrian exhibit!”