Art is a difficult profession. You can spend decades learning the skills of drawing, draftsmanship, and composition. Still, you will be no good if you lack natural aptitude.

Of course, you can always go another way: Slap some paint on a canvas, and sell it for millions. Here are 10 artists who created works with a single color. Whether they are great works or not depends on your interpretation of their meaning.

See Also: 10 Pop Culture Versions Of Famous Paintings

10 Abstract Painting
Ad Reinhardt

Adolf “Ad” Reinhardt was an abstract painter from New York who was an early proponent of abstract expressionism—the subconscious application of colors and shapes. His early works included geometric forms and other traditional techniques. After the 1940s, however, he moved into works composed of entirely one color.

For the last 10 years of his life, he only produced a series of square canvases painted entirely black. These were described as his “ultimate paintings.” After he had painted these black squares, he believed that there would be nothing left for anyone to paint.^[1]

At first glance, they may appear entirely featureless. But there are subtle variations. To notice them demands a lot of time and effort that not everyone is willing to give. When they were first displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one visitor canceled his membership in protest.

9 Black Square
Kazimir Malevich

In 1913, the year that Ad Reinhardt was born, Kazimir Malevich prefigured his ultimate paintings with his own black square. While Reinhardt filled his canvas with black, Malevich simply painted a black square in the center of his creation. He wrote, “In the year 1913, trying desperately to free art from the dead weight of the real world, I took refuge in the form of the square.”

Black Square was described by some as the “first time someone made a painting that wasn’t of something.” It was also called the “zero point of art” by Malevich himself to mark everything that came after it as modern.

Although the painting was once a uniform black, age has made a crazed path of cracks across the surface to reveal the white beneath.^[2]

8 White Paintings
Robert Rauschenberg

Yet another series of black paintings was produced by Robert Rauschenberg in the early years of his career. Painted over newspaper glued to canvas, they look like peeling bark. But he also produced a series of white paintings.

The five paintings in the White series are actually collections of one, two, three, four, or seven identical white canvases to be hung together. When first exhibited, they were considered a cheap trick, but they can now be found in galleries around the world. As the paint degraded with time, they had to be repainted various times by Rauschenberg’s friends to maintain them.

Rauschenberg was a friend of the composer John Cage. He famously wrote a piece of music called 4’33”, where a pianist or other instrumental performers sit silently for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. As a result, the piece is composed of sounds of the environment. Perhaps, this is an ideal accompaniment to these paintings.^[3]

7 Monochrome White Painting
Li Yuan-chia

Li Yuan-chia, one of the most noteworthy Chinese artists of the 20th century, worked in painting, sculpture, furniture, and hanging mobiles. He created Monochrome White Painting in 1963. Although casual observation presents a blank white surface, there are features which can be detected at close range.^[4]

Cardboard circles have been attached to the canvas and painted over in the same white as the background. Li described the circles as “cosmic points.” He considered the dots to be the beginning and end of all things. These points were related to the position of things within the boundless space of the universe. The painting was originally titled 2=2-2.

6 The Dylan Painting
Brice Marden

Brice Marden named The Dylan Painting after his friend Bob Dylan because Marden was creating it to help the singer’s career. However, by the time the artwork was completed, Dylan, a future Nobel Laureate, was already more famous than Marden. So the painting remained with Marden.^[5]

The canvas was painted with turpentine and beeswax, a combo to which the gray color had been added. Then the artist used a spatula to flatten the surface while leaving marks to add evidence of his work. There was also a strip of unpainted canvas left bare at the bottom of the artwork. Paint was allowed to drip there, and other marks remained to show the process of creation.

5 Achrome
Piero Manzoni

Piero Manzoni is best known for his ironic take on art. His greatest work was titled Artist’s Shit. Ninety cans were supposedly filled with the artist’s waste and sold at the price of each can’s weight in gold. However, he worked in slightly more traditional media as well.

His series of works called Achromes look white but were described by the artist as colorless. He began the series with simple white canvases. Sometimes, they were heavily painted to show the texture of the paints. Later works were gouged and crossed with lines.

Toward the end of the series, Manzoni stopped using canvas and began using cotton, acrylic resin, fiberglass, and painted bread rolls. He also started to tint his works with pigments that would change color over time.^[6]

4 Surrogate Paintings
Allan McCollum

Allan McCollum has reduced paintings to a generic form. His works are placeholders for paintings. Although his pieces look like paintings in frames, they are actually plaster casts which have been painted to look like that. There isn’t any difference between the painting inside and the frame. No two are identical. They are mass-produced yet handmade works.^[7]

The painting inside each “frame” is perfectly featureless with no trace of the artist’s hand. His studio is set up like a production line, with his assistants taking roles in each stage. The Surrogate Paintings bridge the gap between art and automation.

3 Grey
Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter’s paintings range from richly detailed, almost photo-realistic portraits to brightly colored abstracts. He has even designed a stained glass window for Cologne Cathedral which is formed of squares of vibrant glass. In addition to these works, he has created a series of “grey paintings.”

In varying shades of gray, the paintings run from featureless matte works to complex patterns. The majority were created in the 1960s and ’70s. Richter considers “grey” to be the perfect color to represent nothingness. He explained, “It does not trigger off feelings or associations, it is actually neither visible nor invisible.”^[8]

2 Veil
Shirazeh Houshiary

Shirazeh Houshiary is an Iranian artist and former nominee for the prestigious Turner Prize. Her works in conceptual art hang in the New York Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Collection.

Her 1999 painting Veil appears to be a simple painted black square. She considers Veil to be a self-portrait. The artist wrote Sufi phrases in Arabic on the black painted canvas in graphite. Even at close range, these are almost impossible to see. Houshiary considers her works as somewhere between painting and drawing.^[9]

1 IKB 79
Yves Klein

Traditionally, blue was a rare color in art. The sources for blue paint were often expensive because it was hard to produce. Lapis lazuli, the pigment in ultramarine, had to be imported from Afghanistan. Yves Klein decided that blue would be the medium of his life.^[10]

In 1946, while lying on a beach with his friends, Klein stared up at the blue sky. He took his hand and signed his name on the sky, claiming it as his own. As he described the event:

“That day, as I lay stretched upon the beach of Nice, I began to feel hatred for birds which flew back and forth across my blue sky, cloudless sky, because they tried to bore holes in my greatest and most beautiful work.”

Working with a pigment maker, he created—and trademarked—his own version of ultramarine called “International Klein Blue.”

Interior and exterior sets and settings, themes and motifs, monsters and menaces, even dialogue and sound effects—all these horror movie elements have been suggested by famous paintings.

Inspired by the works of acclaimed artists, horror movie directors have added audio, visual, and dramatic effects to their own creative visions, enhancing their artistic works with those of masters of expressionism, magic realism, realism, surrealism, modernism, romanticism, and the Baroque.

The results are striking, adding richness and depth to the films’ own images and themes of the horrific and the terrible.

10 Picture of Dorian Gray

Although he may not be as famous as some of the other painters on this list, Ivan Albright, the acclaimed “master of the macabre,” was director Albert Lewin’s choice as the artist who would paint the portrait of the protagonist of his horror film The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel.

In the film, as in the novel, Gray, a handsome young man, commissions his portrait. As the result of a deal with the devil, the effects of Gray’s “dissolute and evil life” make their marks on the painting, rather than on Gray’s own appearance, and the vain reprobate remains as young and handsome as ever, despite the passage of time and his multitude of vile deeds. Although the movie was filmed in black and white, Lewin shot the portrait in full color to highlight Gray’s horrific transformation.

In Albright’s oil painting, Portrait of Dorian Gray (1943-1944), Gray is aged, his brow wrinkled, his decayed flesh gray, his nose bulbous, his mouth twisted, and his face and hands smeared with blood. He looks quite mad, with staring, bulging eyes, and his filthy, tattered clothing, also smeared with blood, appears moldy. The furniture in the room in which he stands is likewise ruined, and plaster is missing from the walls. Bizarre faces and monstrous shapes seem to leer from walls, furniture, Gray’s clothing, and the floral carpet under his worn, blood-flecked shoes. Thanks to Albright’s “portrait,” it is clear to the audience that the state of Gray’s soul is, indeed, hideous, however youthful and handsome his fleshly form and countenance may appear; the painting is a perfect expression of the movie’s theme: evil corrupts the soul.

9 Witches Sabbath

In filming The Witch: A New England Folktale (2015), director Robert Eggers, who also wrote the movie’s script, strove to re-create the world of the seventeenth century, in which his drama takes place, so that the setting’s realistic depiction would add credibility to the film’s premise that witches really existed. To this end, he also sought to depict his own witch as believable.

Although witches were “a lot more primal and a lot scarier” than people today might imagine, Eggers said, the witch in his movie must also impress his audience as someone whose existence would have actually been believed by her contemporaries. For this reason, she couldn’t resemble “fairy tale” versions of witches. One way he ensured the accuracy of his depictions of the time of his movie’s setting was to consult “historians and museums and living history experts.”

Eggers also turned to a masterpiece by a famous painter for inspiration concerning how to depict his witch: Francisco Goya’s 1798 Witches Sabbath. Although the work is “outside” the time frame of Eggers’s seventeenth-century world, it is a timeless depiction of the subject, the director said, and the “best visual representations of witches you could ask for.”

The painting shows the devil, in the guise of a goat, seated upright, its horns encircled by a garland, surrounded by witches, one of whom offers the central figure a nude newborn baby, while another presents a naked, emaciated child. Some of the witches are older than others, but none are young. Besides the presentation of the children, presumably as sacrifices, one of the more disturbing images in the painting appears in the background: three naked children’s bodies hung by their necks from a bare, sharpened branch stuck into the ground.

Ironically, although Eggers uses Goya’s painting as a study of witches, seeing in their depiction a realistic presentation of how they might appear, Witches Sabbath, like the other paintings in the six works Goya devoted to “the theme of witchcraft,” are viewed by critics as “a satirical criticism of the superstitions of the educated society to which . . . the painter belonged.”

8 Necronomicon IV and Necronomicon V

The airbrushed paintings of surrealist H. R. Giger are disturbing, unforgettable, one-of-a-kind works featuring half-human, half-machine biomechanical figures; anthropomorphic shrubbery; eel-like monsters; fetuses; phallic shapes; machinery; and a bizarre, monstrous being that inspired the extraterrestrial creature in Ridley Scott’s 1979 science-fiction horror movie Alien.

Painting and sculpting the creature on the set, as well as sculpting the interiors of the spaceship, Giger gave Scott what he wanted. Although the artist had preferred to design the alien creature anew, Scott, impressed by “the unique manner in which” Giger’s Necronomicon IV (1976) and Necronomicon V (1976) paintings “conveyed both horror and beauty,” demanded that Giger “follow their form.” As a result, not only was Scott’s audience terrified by Giger’s alien, but the artist won a 1980 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for his work on the movie.

7 The Garden of Earthly Delights

Regan MacNeil, possessed by evil spirits, spouts, in addition to green projectile vomit, profanity, obscenity, blasphemy, insults, and invective at the two priests who have come to her home to exorcise the demons within. The teen’s bizarre behavior presented a problem. What does the voice of the devil sound like? The Exorcist’s director William Friedkin and Chris Newman, who worked in the film’s sound department, found their answer in an unlikely source: Hieronymus Bosch’s famous surrealist triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1510).

Because Linda Blair, who portrayed Regan, was a child actor, the husky-voiced Mercedes McCambridge delivered much of the 1971 film’s foul language. Friedkin showed Newman Bosch’s painting, pointing out the dozens of demons in the panel of the triptych that represents the painter’s vision of hell. “That’s what the voice of Satan should sound like,” Friedkin suggested. To create the “elaborate . . . cacophony of sounds suggested by Bosch’s images of the demonic, “hundreds of . . . recordings” were used to create a mix of “diverse sounds” which included, among others, those of “croaking tree frogs and bumblebees.”

6 The Empire of Light

Rene Magritte’s surreal series of oil and gouache paintings, collectively called The Empire of Light (1940s-1960s), provided the inspiration for an exterior shot in Friedkin’s film. The paintings present a similar scene: a house, surrounded by nighttime shapes of trees, shrubbery, and shadows, illuminated only by a lamppost on the lawn and a light in an upstairs window, stands under a cloudy, blue daytime sky.

Because the painting juxtaposes day and night in an impossible manner, many regard the scene it depicts as eerie—a perfect image for a film about a girl’s deliverance from demonic possession. Magritte’s painting inspired the scene in Friedkin’s film that shows the arrival of Father Merrin, as he stands alone on the street, beneath a lamppost, outside the house in which the devil awaits him. The bright sky represents heaven, the dwelling place of God, perhaps, while the darkness of the earth, the devil’s domain, symbolizes evil.

5 Amedeo Modigliani Paintings

The monster in Stephen King’s It is a shape-shifter, able to assume the form of anyone’s worst nightmare. Often, It appears as Pennywise, the mad, menacing clown, but, in director Andy Muschietti’s 2017 movie adaptation of King’s novel, It also transforms itself into such guises as a werewolf, a leper, and a female flutist who emerges from an Amedeo Modigliani painting in the office of the father of young Stanley Uris.

The flutist is terrifying because her face is incredibly elongated, the features are beyond asymmetrical, because impossibly out of alignment, and the misshapen skulls seem to waver upon elongated necks. This particular avatar of It, the director explained, is “a literal translation of a very personal childhood fear. In my house, there was a print of a Modigliani painting that I found terrifying. And the thought of meeting an incarnation of the woman in it would drive me crazy.” The painting’s depiction of a female figure was so “deformed,” the director added, that it struck him as monstrous. In a sense, the bizarre flutist in his version of It is how King’s monster appears to him; It has taken the form most terrifying to the director, a realization of Muschietti’s own worst childhood fear.

4 The Nightmare

In 1781, Henry Fuseli painted Der Nachtmahr (The Nightmare), in which an incubus, or male sex demon, perches upon the abdomen of a sleeping woman dressed in a nightgown, her arms and head dangling off the bed and the rest of her body in a sensuous attitude. A horse’s head (belonging to the night mare, or nightmare) emerges from the bedroom’s dense shadows.

In 2015, the famous painting inspired the motif for the film of the same title, directed by Akiz, a pseudonym for Achim Bornhak: the movie’s main character, Tina sleeps with the hideous demonic creature next to her. Is she imagining its presence? Is she the only one who sees it?

Real or imaginary, how does the entity relate to Tina, and what does it represent? It seems that Bornhak is purposefully ambiguous about the creature’s significance and, therefore, the theme of his movie. The fetus-like being could represent Tina’s incipient madness. It could symbolize her estrangement from her peers. It might suggest Tina’s fear of rejection.

The movie’s allusions to Stanley Kubric’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and to his A Clockwork Orange; to the mystical English romantic poet William Blake; and, of course, to Fuseli’s painting seem to frustrate interpretation as much as they might offer clues to the movie’s meaning, which makes critics wonder, even more, what Bornhak’s intentions could be. Perhaps, the film’s meaning depends on the audience’s own interpretations.

3 House by the Railroad

Known to millions, Norman Bates’s Victorian house, standing alone, on the hill overlooking his isolated motel, is one of the most unforgettable parts of the setting for Alfred Hitchcock’s macabre 1960 masterpiece Psycho. Far fewer are apt to know that the inspiration for this house of horrors is the 1925 painting House by the Railroad, by the celebrated Edward Hopper.

The Museum of Metropolitan Art in New York City describes the painting’s residence as “a grand Victorian home, its base and grounds obscured by the tracks of a railroad [which] create a visual barrier that seems to block access to the house, which is isolated in an empty landscape.” It is just this mood that Hitchcock’s house atop the hill creates. Rather than inviting, the house is forbidding. It exists not as part of a larger community, but is, instead, isolated and alone; it cuts off its resident from the larger world, allowing Bates to live in an imaginary reality of his own devise, a world, which proves to be one both of loneliness and of madness.

2 Susanna and the Elders

Other paintings besides that of Hopper also inspire one of the settings for Psycho, the parlor behind Bates’s office in the motel. According to a trailer for the movie, Bates himself describes the parlor as his “favorite spot.” Pointing out one of the paintings on the parlor’s wall, he starts to explain its “great significance,” but fails to finish his thought. The painting is a print of William van Mieris’s 1731 Susanna and the Elders, which has more than a merely decorative or an aesthetic purpose; it covers the peephole through which Bates spies on Marion Crane.

The painting itself recalls the thirteenth chapter of Daniel in the Catholic Bible (the book of Susanna in the Protestant apocrypha), in which Susanna, an upstanding young woman, is spied upon by elders as she bathes. When she refuses their demands to have sex with them, they then endanger both her reputation and her life by lying about their having caught her in the act of adultery. The presence of the painting therefore creates an allusion that underscores the parallels between Susanna’s plight and Crane’s own, intensifying the movie’s suspense. It also implicates the film’s audience, who, like the painting’s elders and Bates himself, also “spy” on Crane as she showers.

1 Venus with a Mirror

The parlor behind the office of the Bates Motel also displays Titian’s 1555 masterpiece Venus with a Mirror. Voluptuous, the half-naked goddess sits, her right arm and lower body draped in red velvet, gazing into a mirror held up for this purpose by a winged Cupid. A similar second attendant holds a hand mirror behind her head, so she can examine herself behind as well as to the front. Her rapt gaze suggests that she is pleased with what she sees.

As Katrina Powers observes, in her discussion of the painting in The Journal of American Culture, “She holds her left hand up to her chest, perhaps to admire the gold bracelet and ring that adorn it,” as she also considers whether the jewelry is a good match for “her pearl earrings and the gold and pearl decorations she wears in her blonde hair.” In no way should her raised arm be interpreted as “shielding her nudity,” Powers declares, for it is rather, more likely, “one of [the] many poses” she strikes while contemplating “her own loveliness.”

In the display of the Venus portrait alongside that of the Susanna painting, critics have seen multiple meanings, including “the connection between voyeurism, desire, and violence” (Donald Spoto); “voyeurism, wrongful accusation, corrupted innocence, power misused, secrets, lust and death” (Erik Lunde and Douglas Noverr); and “a rape fantasy” (Michael Walker). It may be, too, that, for Bates, Marion represents the temptation of female sexuality that his “mother” forbids him (Venus) and the desire to surrender to this temptation, through voyeurism (Susanna) that ends in violence and death for Marion, the embodiment of these conflicting impulses and needs.

Ah, the Renaissance. A period of tremendous social progression and scientific achievement. It was a cultural rescue from the stagnation of the Late Middle Ages, and most importantly, how the Ninja Turtles got their names. And though no legacy can compare to those totally tubular turtles, it’s also worth mentioning that the period produced some of the most famous art in history.

Renaissance art represented a huge advancement in realism due to the movement’s scientific investigations into anatomy, perspective, and light. This really comes through in its masterfully skillful paintings… most of the time. Any big leap forward is bound to have its stumbling points, and a lot of Renaissance paintings are evidence of that. Whether creepy, cryptic, or just downright puzzling, here are ten Renaissance paintings with images that are enlighten-mental.

10 Most Everything by Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was a talented 16th-century Italian painter who spent his life painting lifelike but expressive portraits of nobles, their families, and their pets. His whole career was very standard and he never really found a way to stand out. Just kidding. He was a total weirdo who painted people made of fruit, cuts of meat, household objects, and even other people.

The funny thing is that Arcimboldo really could paint realistic portraits and the like, but he still dedicated his career to creating the weirdest fruit people you’ve ever seen. He would draw, for example, the Holy Roman Emperor as a sculpture made of vegetables—the firm head-of-cabbage shoulders are particularly flattering. Another gem is “The Cook,” which depicts the titular chef as a demonic assemblage of roasted pigs and pheasants. The casual absurdism of his work makes Arcimboldo the Eric Andre of Renaissance painters.

9 “The Creation of Adam” and His Brain

“The Creation of Adam” is one of the most famous paintings in history. You may know it as the ‘God doing the E.T. finger’ painting, as part of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, or as a hilarious set-piece from Arrested Development. Either way, the work is iconic. Painted at the beginning of the 1500s, it wasn’t until almost 500 years later that a doctor noticed an unusual and hidden anatomic detail to the painting.

Behind God are twelve figures (whose nature is debated) and a swirling pink cloak, all of which combine to form a surprisingly accurate outline of the human brain. Further, the folds in the cloak and placement of the figures and their limbs divide the brain into its major sections—cerebrum, frontal lobes, brain stem, its artery, and even smaller pieces like the pituitary gland—again to a high level of accuracy. Why Michelangelo did this is unknown, but the most dramatic take is that the artist was trying to sneak in his belief that God is a product of the human mind.

8 “The Ambassadors” and Their Skull

Hans Holbein the Younger painted “The Ambassadors” for one of two reasons: either to hide some Dan Brown-esque message or just to be a troll. At first glance, the work is just a double portrait, showing two men leaning on a shelf (and looking really unimpressed with the whole affair). But hidden in the painting, and not-so-hidden, are about a dozen weird details that historians still debate.

The most famous is the giant skull between the two men’s legs. Its presence is obvious from the start, but its true nature is obscured due to extreme anamorphosis—meaning you can only see its actual shape from a certain angle. It’s like those hyper-realistic sidewalk drawings that only look right from one specific spot, and otherwise look like funhouse mirror distortions. Why Holbein did this is unknown, but many scholars believe it is just because he could.

7 “An Allegory with Venus and Cupid” and Syphilis

Angolo Bronzino’s “An Allegory with Venus and Cupid” is another that looks quite normal at first glance. Heck, even at a second and third glance. But like most masterpieces, it’s been pored over again and again, generating at least one interesting take on the whole work: a warning of the dangers of syphilis.

Syphilis had just begun to ravage Europe in the decades before this painting was produced, and supposedly the work is about the disease from corner to corner. The painting is pretty blatantly sexual, and all its characters apparently pay the price. One is stabbed by a thorn and does not notice—like syphilitic nerve damage. There are also missing fingernails, swollen fingers, patchy alopecia, red eyes, and toothless gums—all either symptoms of syphilis or side effects from its treatment. The moral: even if you’re the goddess of love herself, reckless, unprotected sex is a big no-no.

6 “The Arnolfini Portrait” and the Weird Flex

When Jan van Eyck painted “The Arnolfini Portrait,” he wasn’t just after portraying a scene or its subjects; he wanted to flex his muscles. Van Eyck was a master, one of the best painters of his day, and is even credited with inventing the modern form of oil painting. “The Arnolfini Portrait” was his subtle, sneaky way of proving he could do even more.

The main painting shows a man and woman getting married and is simply masterful in its perspective and realism. But van Eyck blows that completely out of the water in just one small section. Hanging on the back wall of the scene is a mirror, and within the mirror, a perfect recreation of the scene from behind, including the mirror’s natural fish-eye effect. That’s right, within the painting is a whole other painting of the first painting from behind, and it displays a technical aptitude previously unseen in its field.

5 “The Garden of Earthly Delights” has Hidden Music

Hieronymus Bosch is famous for his surreal, symbolic, nightmarish depictions of religious scenery, like if Michelangelo and Salvador Dali had an old Dutch baby. His most famous works are big, sprawling altarpieces like “The Last Judgement,” “The Temptation of St. Anthony,” and most famous of all, “The Garden of Earthly Delights.”

The piece shows three scenes: one is likely Eden, one possibly Earth, and one Hell. Each is filled with dozens and dozens of trippy images, but one stands out. In the Hell scene, a series of musicians are tortured with their instruments, and one evidently was punished by having music tattooed on his butt. Well, one music student transcribed that music, and now we can all listen to the “600-year-old butt music from hell.”

4 The Voynich manuscript

Though not itself a painting, the infamous Voynich Manuscript contains dozens of paintings within it, and each is stranger than the last. The manuscript is a hand-written and hand-illustrated journal and from cover to cover is a complete mystery.

For one thing, the whole journal is written in its own unique language, which has never been successfully translated. It seems unlikely to be just a hoax, as the writing bears all the telltale signs of actual language. In addition, the book is filled with cryptic paintings that depict, among others: alien-like plants, ornate diagrams of unknown items/codes/philosophies, religious scenes of nymphs and angels, dragons, odd sculptures, and new constellations. The person who wrote the manuscript, why they wrote it, and what it was meant to be used for are still completely unknown, but it seems to come from somewhere in Italy in the 15th century.

3 “Madonna with Saint Giovannino” and a UFO

Domenico Ghirlandaio’s “Madonna with Saint Giovannino” is 99% normal religious Renaissance painting, but it’s the 1% that attracts attention. The painting is a scene of the Madonna, Saint John, and baby Jesus, and most notably- a little blob in the background sky.

The blob, which appears to be flying, is a grayish disk and emits glowing gold rays from all around it. Also in the background are a man and his dog. Both are looking up at the object, the man shielding his eyes from the harsh golden light. Naturally, many have interpreted this as a UFO and cite it as evidence of (semi-)ancient aliens.

2 “The Last Supper” Soundtrack

“The Last Supper” by Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most famous pieces of art in existence. Because of that, and because its subject material is the last supper of Christ with his apostles (including Judas the betrayer), it has been the subject of constant interpretation and reinterpretation by scholars. There are claims of numerology, a hidden Mary Magdalene, and more. Another is, and I can’t believe I’m typing this again, a hidden musical score in the painting.

Yes, apparently Bosch isn’t the only one. Using the table as a base to start the staff lines and the positions of the subjects’ hands and the pieces of bread they hold (symbols of the body of Christ) as music notes, a short piece emerges. It’s been described as a solemn requiem; a sad little piece meant to lament the impending death of Christ, which some interpret as a secret nod to da Vinci’s otherwise dubious faith.

1 Ugly Babies

This weird image isn’t in one painting but hundreds. For some reason, it took artists thousands of years to figure out what children look like. Hundreds of positively gorgeous scenes, with beautiful adult subjects and precise perspective, have been marred by puzzlingly ugly children. Not just ugly, but hideous, like little pint-size Steve Buscemi’s without the charm.

Ugly babies are such a common phenomenon that it has its own dedicated Tumblr, coffee-table books, and scholarly studies attempting to find the cause. One theory suggests that because Christian churches commissioned most paintings, their child subjects were all modeled after the baby Christ, who was born perfectly formed and unchanged. That would make him look like a tiny adult man, a DeVito if you will, and hence the baby’s ugliness. Whether this “homuncular Jesus” theory is right or not, it’s hard to explain away just how grotesque these little monsters were.

A million dollars is a lot of money for most people, especially when it’s spent on a single item. However, the paintings on this list are worth even more to the collectors who bought them, mostly at auctions—in some cases, a whole lot more.

Surprisingly, these multi-million-dollar works of art, many of which are not by painters whose names are well known to the public, are apt to leave many wondering who in their right minds would pay anything, much less millions, for such pieces of—well, art.

Of course, art is subjective, and people’s tastes sometimes differ widely. Still, most of us won’t be able to resist scratching our heads, pondering how these paintings ever commanded even a fraction of their sale prices. Judge for yourself: are any of these multi-million-dollar paintings worth the money collectors paid for the dubious privilege of owning them?

Related: 10 Fascinating Old-Timey Art Trends

10 Untitled by Robert Ryman

Depending on a person’s frame of reference, a few of the paintings of American minimalist painter Robert Ryman (1930-2019) looks like either a bit of stucco plastered onto a rectangular surface or a square-shaped toaster pastry covered in white icing and spotted with green mold.

Apparently, Ryman liked the painting so well that he recreated it numerous times, substituting different colors to create the “moldy” effect he developed in 1953 as a beginning artist using oil on canvas board to experiment with technique. As Suzanne Hudson points out, Ryman became “known for producing scores of white squares,” even though not all his squares are white since he also used colors on occasion.

There was a reason for this repetition of (mainly) white squares. Ryman was not concerned with creating representational work. “He was not interested in composing a picture,” Hudson explains, “but in clarifying process.” He wanted to learn how paint worked. He also wanted to reduce the physical space between a painting and the wall on which it hung. To this end, in one experiment with technique, the minimalist painted his work directly onto the wall. Although he was an innovative painter and a conceptual artist, Ryman’s work always seemed to return to his initial experiment with painted squares, white or otherwise.^[1]

Some might look askew at the artist’s fixation. Still, there is no denying that his “white squares” are worth a lot of money for some collectors, one of whom paid $15 million for one of the equal-sided rectangles, and it didn’t even have a title—unless Untitled counts as one.

9 Point by Brice Marden

American artist Brice Marden (1938- ), another minimalist, also produced a series of square paintings, seeming, for a time, as fixated as Ryman had been obsessed with his own scores of white squares. As Roberta Smith points out in her review of Marden’s work, “Throughout the 1970’s Marden stuck to his one-canvas/one-color formula with monkish devotion.”

However, unlike those of Ryman’s squares, the sides of Marden’s rectangles are not equal in length. The top and the bottom sides are typically twice the length of the right and left sides. The rectangle itself may be divided into thirds, each of which may be either a different color, as in For Pearl (1970), or different shades of a single color, as in Point (1969). It is especially impressive that one of Marden’s earlier transitional works, Point, sold at auction for over $6 million!^[2]

8 Concerro Spazale, Atteste by Lucio Fontana

Twelve juxtaposed diagonal lines at varying heights and lengths, some thin and light, others slightly thicker and darker, looking more like slashes than calculated strokes of a brush, make up the entirety of Argentine-Italian Lucio Fontana’s Concerro Spizale (Spatial Concept), one in a series of similar monochrome canvases. The succession of paintings, the artist said, constitutes “an art for the Space Age.” And it does look a little like the type of painting that George and Jane Jetson might have on a wall of their Las Vegas Stratosphere-like house or Mr. Spock would frame on a wall of his starship Enterprise living quarters.

The idea for his Space Age art resulted from an accident of sorts. According to a biographical sketch of the painter, in 1948, during “a rage, Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) destroyed a painting by piercing his canvas. From this act of destruction, a new concept of art was formed” by which he achieved a three-dimensional effect not by the traditional trompe d’oeil technique, but by puncturing and tearing the surface of the canvas to attract attention to the space behind and before it. His Concerro Spizale is divided into two types: Bucchi, in which holes in the canvas produce the effects, and Tagli, in which knife slashes accomplish the same purpose.^[3]

The founder of Spatialism’s innovative style commands high prices. In a Sotheby’s auction, one of the paintings in his Concerro Spizale series sold for a whopping $12.78 million!

7 Black Fire I (1961) by Barnett Newman

Early in his career, American artist Barnett Newman (1905-1970) experimented with surrealism, during which period he used “zips,” or thin vertical lines, to divide his paintings’ colored areas. Newman’s statement about the religious inspiration for his work may explain the titles of some of his early works such as Adam and Eve, Uriel, and Abraham and of his series Stations of the Cross. “What is the explanation of the seemingly insane drive of man to be painter and poet,” Newman asks, “if it is not an act of defiance against man’s fall and an assertion that he return to the Garden of Eden? For the artists are the first men.”

The artist was also interested in creating works that did not rely on the representation of human forms or landscapes. He wanted, instead, to eschew “the European tradition of formal pictorial arrangement.” His solution was to avoid presenting a dominant “figure” on a recessive background. To this end, the canvas on which Black Fire I (1961) is painted is divided in half. The left side is black; the right side, light beige. Just left of center, a thin vertical black line further separates the beige side of the painting so that it appears that both the black and the beige extend into one another’s territory, struggling to possess the entire canvas.^[4]

In May 2014, Black Fire I sold to a private owner at a packed Christie’s auction for $84.2 million, over $30 million more than the auction house had predicted!

6 Suprematist Composition (1916) by Kazimir Malevich

Suprematist Composition by Soviet avant-garde artist Kasimir Malevich (1879-1935) attracts the eye by its design, which features vibrant colors and a diagonal composition in which rectangular forms seem to float, suspended midair.

One of a series called Suprematist Composition, his 1916 painting of the same title, like much of the artist’s other work, shows a fascination with geometric shapes and precision which “encouraged his followers to examine Supremacist perspectives for themselves,” writes John Milner in Kazimir Malevich and the Art of Geometry. One of Malevich’s followers, in fact, confined himself to the use of a compass and a ruler as the means by which to compose drawings and paintings. Despite his own fascination with geometry, Malevich himself preferred to “let [his forms] fly.”^[5]

His followers were not the only ones intrigued by Malevich’s innovative approach to painting. Suprematist Composition (1916) sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $85.8 million!

5 Untitled by Jean-Michel Basquiat

One of American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s untitled works features a misshapen black skull (with facial features outlined in white, no less) afloat in a blue sky beside white shapes vaguely resembling buildings. The painting looks much like a graffito that a passerby might see on a street in almost any city in the world. It even bears a “tag,” or graffiti artist’s signature, the letters “AG,” in the lower-left corner of the canvas.

What the painting is intended to suggest is difficult to say. The images seen through the skull’s forehead, inside its mouth, and through what appears to be a window in one of the vague building-like shapes might offer clues, but they are themselves merely shapes rather than representations of objects or human subjects. As such, they are difficult to interpret, which may be the artist’s intention.

It seems no accident, though, that the painting resembles a graffito; Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) was a New York City graffiti artist, and his painting was not executed with oils but with spray paint. Although the skull might not be to everyone’s taste, Basquiat’s world-famous painting commands respect among collectors—it sold for over $110.5 million in 2017!^[6]

4 Flag (1954–1955) by Jasper Johns

Flag is an apt title for the painting of the 48-star American flag by American abstract expressionist Jasper Johns (1930- ). The work was inspired by a dream that the painter, a recently discharged soldier, had the night before he began to paint it. The work, writes Carolyn Lanchner, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, is often compared to Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe).

However, the relationship between Johns’s painting and Magritte’s is antithetical: whereas the surrealist’s painting points to the boundary between reality and illusion…Johns’ painting “collapses their difference.” Flag sent a still-memorable jolt to the art world.^[7]

In 2010, over half a century after Johns created the work, Flag delivered another “memorable jolt” when it sold at a private sale for an “estimated” $100 million!

3 Masterpiece by Roy Lichtenstein

American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein’s Masterpiece (1962) simulates a comic book panel showing a blonde woman alongside the dark-haired man who created the painting they are admiring. Their white complexions result from the Ben-Day dots common to the medium. The painting of the comic book panel includes a dialogue balloon indicating that the female character is speaking. “Why, Brad darling, this painting is a masterpiece! My, soon you’ll have all of New York clamoring for your work!”

According to the Art Institute of Chicago, in creating his painting, Lichtenstein adapted an actual comic book panel, altering both the image and the text and changing the setting from the interior of the automobile in which the couple drove while “having an uncomfortable conversation” to an art gallery in which the woman compliments the artist. In the comic book panel, she says, “But someday this bitterness will pass.” The change in the dialogue, the Art Institute of Chicago’s commentary on Lichtenstein’s painting notes, “is a nod to Lichtenstein’s sense of humor about his newfound fame in the art world.”^[8]

The sale price of Masterpiece must have put a grin on the artist’s face: Agnes Gund, president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, sold the painting for an impressive $165 million!

2 No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red) (1951) by Mark Rothko

In 1951, American abstract painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970) painted No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red), which shows horizontal bands of violet, green, and red—or red-orange, actually. There is much more to the painting than meets the eye. According to a gloss on the work, which sold for $184 million, it is one of 36 pieces in the “Bouvier Affair”—an ongoing court battle between Russian tycoon Dmitry Rybolovlev and his art dealer, Yves Bouvier.

More specifically, the Bouvier Affair is a complex series of lawsuits, international in scope, involving allegations that Bouvier defrauded Rybolovlev out of millions of dollars by using inflated prices or false documents to manipulate “prices in the sale of art works” by not only Rothko but also by Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, and Leonardo da Vinci. The result, allegedly, was that the paintings were sold for much more than their actual market value.^[9]

1 Interchange (1955) by William de Kooning

American abstract expressionist William de Kooning tops our list, his 1955 Interchange having sold for more money than any other painting purchased prior to September 2015. The seller was the David Geffen Foundation and the buyer, American hedge fund manager Kenneth G. Griffin. Today, its sale price remains second only to Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which sold for $450.3 million in November 2017.

The work of art certainly makes many scratch their heads in wonder. Sure, it’s abstract, resembling a jumbled, somewhat ill-defined patchwork of colors and shapes that, more than anything, tend to confuse the viewer. It’s not a stretch to suggest that the mishmash might even make a body dizzy. What, exactly, is Interchange? Fortunately, Bart Barnes’s article in a 1997 issue of The New York Times offers a take on de Kooning’s mess. “His paintings shifted between representation and abstraction,” Barnes hints. Then, if we’re still not quite sure what we’re looking at, he comes right out and tells us: The “fleshy pink mass at its center [represents] a seated woman.”^[10]

With this mystery solved, we can move on to another. How much did Griffin pay for the privilege of owning Interchange? (Drum roll, please.) The painting set him back an astonishing $300 million!

We often hear about famous paintings and other works of art that turned out to be fake. By some estimates, as much as 20% of the art in museums is actually fake. But it also happens the other way around, and a painting that was thought to be a replica or copy turns out to be authentic.

Here are ten famous examples of fakes that turned out to be real.

Related: 10 Fake Artworks And Artifacts Exhibited In Museums

10 Rembrandt’s Self Portrait

Rembrandt is considered by some to be the king of selfies, or self-portraits, having painted nearly 100 over his lifetime. Now it turns out that a self-portrait owned by the National Trust in the United Kingdom, long thought to be a copy, is actually the real thing. Like other works considered to be fake, it had been left in storage for a long time until it caught the interest of an expert. In this case, it was Rembrandt expert Ernst van de Wetering who saw the painting in person in 2013.

After months of testing, analysis, and restoration, experts at the renowned Hamilton Kerr Institute have determined that the work was indeed painted by the Dutch master. Experts removed several layers of yellow varnish, which revealed the original colors and details that are in line with Rembrandt’s painting style. Close analysis also confirmed the signature to have been made at the same time as the painting, a point that had been in doubt before.^[1]

9 Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Young Woman

Another Rembrandt was authenticated during conservation work. The Allentown Art Museum in Pennsylvania has owned the Portrait of a Young Woman since 1961, when it was bequeathed to the museum. Originally thought to be a work by Rembrandt, it was declared a copy in the 1970s, believed to be painted by one of Rembrandt’s assistants. After recent conservation work, it turns out those experts were wrong, and the painting was an original Rembrandt after all.

In 2018, the painting was sent to NYU for conservation and cleaning. During that process, a thick layer of varnish was removed, revealing the original, delicate brushwork and color consistent with the Dutch master’s work. Conservators also used X-ray and new imaging technology to confirm that the painting was a genuine Rembrandt. Outside experts also agreed with NYU that the painting is real. a href=”https://www.npr.org/2020/02/19/807488140/the-rembrandt-that-was-fake-then-real-again” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>^[2]

8 Van Gogh’s Sunset at Montmajour

For nearly 100 years, a Van Gogh collected dust in an attic. Purchased by a Norwegian collector in the early 1900s, it was hidden away when the collector was told that the painting was a fake. The current owners had the painting reviewed by the Van Gogh Museum in 1991 after their purchase and were told then that it was a fake. However, using new technology, the Van Gogh Museum reversed its opinion in 2013.

Experts were able to match the pigments in the paint, as well as the canvas used, to other works by Van Gogh during the same period. The numbering on the back of the canvas also matched an inventory list of Van Gogh’s paintings. And last but not least, Vincent Van Gogh had written to his brother, Theo, about this exact painting. Taken together, the evidence was conclusive that Sunset at Montmajour is a genuine Van Gogh. It was painted in 1888, when Van Gogh lived in Arles, France, during the same period when he created famous works such as Sunflowers.^[3]

7 Botticelli’s Madonna of the Pomegranate

In 2019, experts at the English Heritage declared a painting long thought to be a copy of Botticelli’s Madonna of the Pomegranate to be authentic. The small circular painting shows Mary holding a baby Jesus and a pomegranate, surrounded by angels. It’s a smaller version of Botticelli’s famous Madonna of the Pomegranate on display in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Conservators used several techniques to confirm the authenticity of the painting, including stripping back a thick layer of varnish and dirt, X-rays, and infrared tests. They also noted that the painting was of the right period and painted on a common material from that time. After consulting with experts at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Gallery, the conclusion was that the painting did, in fact, come from Botticelli’s Florence workshop.

Whether the work was painted by Botticelli himself, however, will never be known, as Botticelli employed several assistants to help him with his work, which was in high demand during his lifetime.^[4]

6 Monet’s A Haystack in the Evening Sun

Using new technology, researchers at a university in Finland have been able to confirm the authenticity of a Monet painting. The painting, A Haystack in the Evening Sun, has been owned by Finland’s Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation for more than 60 years. Although the foundation suspected it was a Monet, they couldn’t prove it because the painting lacked a signature. Until the technology caught up.

Researchers at the university used a special device to identify the painting’s elemental composition. They also uncovered Monet’s signature and the date of the painting, 1891, which had been buried beneath a layer of paint. It’s unclear why Monet decided to paint over his signature. But the signature is proof that he painted the work, which now fits into a broader series of “Haystack” paintings. It also makes this painting the first Monet to be held by a public collection in Finland.^[5]

5 Rubens’s Portrait of a Young Girl, possibly Clara Serena Rubens

In 2013, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York sold off a painting, Portrait of a Yong Girl, Possibly Clara Serena Rubens, to raise funds to buy more works of art. They believed the painting to be by a follower of Rubens and not the Flemish master himself. It turns out they may have been wrong about that.

Several prominent Rubens scholars have since confirmed that it’s a real Rubens. This included the director of the Rubenshuis, a museum in Antwerp dedicated to the works of Rubens and his contemporaries, as well as Ruben’s former house and studio. The Rubenshuis is also showing the painting as part of a special exhibit.

However, not all experts are convinced, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and David Jaffe, a Rubens expert and former curator at the National Gallery.^[6]

4 Raphael’s Young Woman

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

For more than 40 years, Raphael’s Young Woman sat in the basement of an Italian palace, thought to be painted by an unknown artist after the great Renaissance painter’s death and practically worthless. Then in 2010, art expert Mario Scalini started sorting through the palace’s extensive art collection and came across the painting, set in a very elaborate and ornate frame.

After a closer inspection, Scalini suspected the painting might have been painted by Raphael himself and sent it off to a research institute in Pisa. There, experts used infrared and ultraviolet technology to “see” through the different layers of paint. They confirmed that the painting was a genuine Raphael.^[7]

3 Constable’s Early The Hay Wain

Art expert Philip Mould was always convinced that an early The Hay Wain painting that he owned had been painted by John Constable. Unable to prove it, however, he sold the painting in 2000 for £35,000.

In 2017, Mould co-hosted BBC’s Fake or Fortune? show, which had the painting analyzed by experts in Los Angeles. Using advanced technology, the experts were able to prove that the painting was a genuine Constable. It was painted around the same time, offering a different view of Willy Lott’s cottage as his famous The Hay Wain, which had been voted one of the most popular paintings in the UK. Experts were also able to trace the provenance of the painting to a sale by the famous painter’s son.

While Mould missed out on a large windfall, he was more than happy to be finally vindicated in his belief.^[8]

2 Three of Turner’s Works

Philip Mould and BBC’s Fake or Fortune? show helped authentic another set of paintings. This time, it was three paintings by famed British landscape artist JMW Turner: The Beacon Light, Off Margate, and Margate Jetty.

In 1951, Gwendoline and Margaret Davies left several paintings by Turner to the National Museum Wales. A few years later, these three paintings were declared to be fakes and removed from display.

The paintings were reexamined in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, with the same conclusion. It wasn’t until the BBC show conducted a new investigation, using technologies developed recently, that the result changed. This time, with the use of modern technology, experts were able to conclude that these paintings were, in fact, by Turner himself. This conclusion was also validated by a more in-depth look at the provenance and history of the paintings, as well as further consultations with Turner experts.^[9]

1 Rodin’s Bust of Napoleon

For years, a bust of Napoleon sat in the corner of a borough council meeting room in New Jersey. It wasn’t until 2014, when they hired a college art history student, Mallory Mortillaro, to archive their artwork, that they discovered that the bust had been made by none other than renowned French sculptor Auguste Rodin.

Mortillaro noticed a faint signature on the bust but didn’t have much luck otherwise confirming whether it was real or not. So she contacted the Comité Auguste Rodin in Paris, a group that could determine its authenticity.

Jerome Le Blay, head of the committee and a Rodin expert, was able to confirm that the bust was real after he traveled to New Jersey to view it. They even had a photograph of Rodin with the bust, but the bust had seemingly disappeared until recently. It turns out it had been in a corner in New Jersey all along.^[10]

A series of portraits, dubbed the Crying Boy paintings, features a young ragamuffin with large eyes that meet the viewers to establish an instant connection. Complete with fresh tears streaming down his face, the perfectly captured expression of despair evokes a strong emotional reaction. The image was designed to pull at the heartstrings of its viewers, and it did just that.

The Crying Boy series gained fame in the UK, and other parts of the world, with thousands of prints purchased and displayed in homes and businesses. However, when terrifying events accompanied the paintings, many began to question if there was something sinister attached to them. Rumors spread of a curse that was so evil it destroyed its subject and creator and damaged the homes and lives of anyone who purchased one of the prints. Skeptics, on the other hand, provided other explanations. Many seem to have an opinion on this story, from urban legend and a cursed myth to media hysteria and a bid to sell more papers.

Decide what you believe about the curse after hearing these ten unsettling facts about the Crying Boy paintings.

Related: Top 10 Cursed And Haunted Household Items

10 The Artist Used a Pseudonym

The Crying Boy paintings were signed by Giovanni Bragolin, an Italian painter who doesn’t really exist. The true artist was a Spanish painter named Bruno Amadio, although he was also known to go by Franchot Seville on occasion. Amadio was one of the most mysterious artists of the mid-1900s. He painted over 60 portraits in his Crying Boy collection from the ’50s through 1980, with each printed, reprinted, and widely distributed through mass productions. The prints became very popular, with over 50,000 copies purchased in the UK alone.

The Crying Boy series was the only artwork of Amadio’s that saw success. However, it was a double-edged sword for Amadio as the images—depicting horror, suffering, despair, and longing of the innocent—also brought about speculations of abuse. Many questioned whether Amadio “specifically frightened them, terrified them, and then painted them,” with some even going so far as to liken Amadio to the devil himself.^[1]

9 The Subject Was an Orphan

According to Amadio, the subject of one of his paintings was “a little street urchin” that he came across in Madrid in the 1960s. The young boy was a mute orphan with a sorrowful expression that instantly captivated the artist. Amadio had stopped to paint the child when a Catholic priest came over to issue him a stern warning. He said that the boy, named Don Bonillo, had run away after seeing his parents die in a fire.

Since then, fires of unknown origin would break out wherever the boy went. It happened with such frequency that he was given the nickname, “Diablo,” which translates to “devil.” The priest warned Amadio against having anything to do with the child. However, the painter ignored him and adopted the boy. He brought Don Bonillo home to live with him and painted the Crying Boy series.^[2]

8 Amadio’s Studio and Apartment Caught Fire

The unique relationship between the painter and his favorite subject came to a sudden fiery end when Amadio’s studio and apartment mysteriously caught on fire. He lost everything and, as a result, Amadio was ruined. He remembered the priest’s warnings and accused the boy of starting the blaze. He kicked him out and never saw Don Bonillo again.

The situation continued to worsen for Amadio when reports of the curse of the “Crying Boy” paintings started to spread across Europe. His fame quickly turned to suspicion, and he became known as a jinx. No one wanted to look at any of his paintings, let alone commission him to paint something new.^[3]

7 Did the Subject Suffer a Tragic Death?

Unfortunately, Don Bonillo’s life ended much like it began: in a blaze of fire. In 1976, police responded to the report of a car crash on the outskirts of Barcelona. The car exploded after crashing into a wall. When officers arrived on the scene, they found that the driver had been burned beyond recognition. He was the only one in the car at the time of the crash.

Police officers searched the glove box, which survived the fire, and found part of a driver’s license. The name on the license revealed the victim to be Don Bonillo. For many, the fiery manner of his death served to add validity to the Crying Boy curse.^[4]

6 The Prints Survived over 60 House Fires

The first reported house fire occurred at the home of Ron and Mary Hall in Rotherham in 1985. The fire destroyed everything on the first floor of their terraced council home, save for one item: a print of the Crying Boy that hung on their living room wall. During the fire, the painting fell from the wall, landed face down, and, strangely, was only slightly charred. Though the cause of the fire was found to be a chip pan (deep frying pan) that overheated and burst into flames, the couple became convinced that the painting was cursed and that it, not the pan, was to blame for the destruction of their home.

The Halls were not alone in their experience or theory. Many similar fires followed, with homes, and even a pizza parlor, falling victim to the curse. Despite starting from typical causes, each fire left behind a Crying Boy painting. The curse evolved to cause injury and death, with some people reporting accidents after purchasing the print. Many others were horrified to find they could not burn it when they tried.^[5]

5 Firefighters Fail to Explain Why Paintings Did Not Burn

Fire service investigations pointed to discarded cigarettes, over-heated chip pans, and faulty wiring, leading firefighters to believe that the house fires resulted from human carelessness rather than a supernatural curse. Rotherham fire station officer Alan Wilkinson personally logged 50 fires where the Crying Boy paintings survived. Wilkinson was skeptical but could not explain how the artworks survived the flames. His wife, on the other hand, had her own theory: “I always say it’s the tears that put the fire out.”

Wilkinson’s disbelief in the curse did not save him from some superstitions. When presented with a framed print of the Crying Boy upon his retirement, he politely declined the gift. The widespread panic eventually led Chief Divisional Officer Mick Riley of the Yorkshire Fire Service to issue a statement meant to debunk the curse. “The reason why this picture has not always been destroyed in the fire is because it is printed on high-density hardboard, which is very difficult to ignite.” His statement did little to convince the public. Neither did the fact that the paintings were often of different children and even from different artists.^[6]

4 An Article from a British Tabloid Started All the Fuss

On September 4, 1985, the Crying Boy paintings received the first of what would be six weeks of news coverage with an article titled, “Blazing Curse of the Crying Boy.” Published on page 13 by a British tabloid newspaper called The Sun, it detailed the harrowing experience of the recent victims of a house fire: Ron and Mary Hall. A follow-up article on September 5 brought new terrifying stories from readers that claimed to be victims of the curse.

In addition to fires, injuries, and deaths, some accounts included supernatural occurrences, with readers alleging they saw the print sway from side to side on the wall or that it returned to its place after being destroyed. The Sun also claimed that the firefighters believed in the curse, despite conflicting statements by the fire service. Readers were captivated. Due to a wide-reaching audience, awareness of the “Crying Boy” curse spread very quickly. The Sun fanned the flames—no pun intended—with additional articles, each more sensational than the first. By the end of October, panic reached an all-time high, and many looked to The Sun for an answer.^[7]

3 The Paintings Were Burned in a Mass Bonfire

The Sun’s editor Kelvin MacKenzie, credited as the father of the “Crying Boy” curse, was the one to announce, “Enough is enough, folks. If you are worried about a Crying Boy picture hanging in YOUR home, send it to us immediately. We will destroy it for you—and that should see the back of any curse.” Soon, the Bouverie Street office of The Sun was overrun with Crying Boy paintings “stacked twelve feet high in the newsroom, spilling out of cupboards, and entirely filling a little-used interview room.” Readers had sent in about 2,500 copies of the print in total.

MacKenzie had to scramble for a solution to destroy all of the paintings. He eventually decided to burn them in a mass bonfire near the River Thames. In a highly-publicized event on Halloween, the paintings burned under the supervision of the fire brigade. The Sun put out an article with the headline “Crying Flame!” that claimed the curse was dissolved once and for all. It offered readers a reassuring quote from one of its police officer chaperones, “I think there will be many people who can breathe a little easier now.”^[8]

2 The Materials May Have Had Something to Do With It

After the mass bonfire, talk of the curse died down but never really went away. British writer and comedian Steve Punt investigated the Crying Boy series in a “BBC Radio 4” production called “Punt Pi” some years later. Punt purchased a Crying Boy picture, then was “inexplicably delayed on his destination several times,” before attempting to burn the print with construction researcher Martin Shipp.

The two men found that beyond the string, the artwork didn’t really burn. Punt and Shipp surmised that a fire-retardant varnish was used. The test also explained how the string holding the painting on the wall would burn and cause it to fall face down on the floor. Another investigation suggested that Amadio’s use of a compression board could also explain why it was so difficult to burn.^[9]

1 The Curse Became an Urban Legend

Despite the various attempts to debunk the curse, people have continued to believe, leading it to become a full-fledged urban legend. One that has expanded to include paintings by different artists. For example, the portraits of Scottish artist Anna Zinkeisen similarly feature crying girls and boys and have often been attached to the “Crying Boy” curse. Season 3, Episode 4 of “Weird or What?” with William Shatner examined the legend of the paintings as recently as 2012. Different online groups also popped up, such as the Dutch “Crying Boy Fan Club,” but many have since disappeared. However, a forum on the Unexplained Mysteries website is still open for viewing. You can also find talk of the curse on social media. On February 2, 2022, Hanbury Arms Haunted Hotel & Museum posted that they currently have several Crying Boy paintings on display, proving that this urban legend isn’t going away anytime soon.

Esotericists argue that when an artist paints a portrait of a person, part of their soul is sealed on paper. People have created plenty of legends and lore about cursed paintings, some of which black magicians could even seal the person himself or tie his life to the portrait. In the case of these paintings, the faces of these children reflect them: wide-open eyes full of fear, resentment, despair, misunderstanding. The viewer’s heart breaks looking at them, so it is quite possible that the picture, after its completion, retained this energy. And through the painting, these small sitters took revenge on those who hung their images at home. But it’s just legend, right?^[10]

Art is important. People who appreciate art typically marvel at its capacity to change their moods and make them think. Art takes us out of the mundane and celebrates human creativity and ingenuity. It’s a conduit for so much raw emotion, life experience and contemplation.

Most art fans can’t afford to spend exorbitant amounts of money on art from the masters, but they’d probably be interested in owning these exquisite paintings if they did have unlimited funds. These absurdly expensive paintings are indisputably status symbols for the ultra-rich, but they’re so much more than that. They became prized because of their beauty and individuality.

Thankfully, many very rich “one-percenters” do eventually decide to donate or lend pricey paintings to museums or art galleries, so everyone can enjoy them.

10. Masterpiece by Roy Lichtenstein – Value $165 Million

This iconic Pop Art painting was created in 1962. Roy Lichtenstein was one of the pioneers of Pop Art, alongside Andy Warhol, and was known for producing work with an upbeat vibe, whereas Warhol sometimes went to the dark side. Lichtenstein tended to stick to his signature comic book style, while Andy would experiment. Despite their differences, these two famous artists, both of whom have passed away, will be linked together forever, thanks to their memorable – and so collectible – contributions to the Pop Art movement.

Masterpiece features stenciled facsimiles of the distinctive Ben-Day dots found in the comic books of the Fifties. These compact colored dots were named for a printer and illustrator called Benjamin Henry Day.

So, who had enough cold, hard cash to buy this legendary painting for 165 million bucks? Well, a hedge fund billionaire, of course. His name is Steve Cohen and he paid this princely sum for Masterpiece in 2017. Cohen owns a range of exceptional paintings. His net worth is through the roof. He’s the type of guy who lists his New York residence for $33.5 million, and was once at the center of a pretty serious insider trading scandal.

9. Nu Couché by Amedeo Modigliani – Value $170.4 Million 

This famous painting was produced during 1917 and it’s an oil on canvas nude from an Italian master. Created more than a hundred years ago, its sensuality startled and hypnotized art fans when it was first exhibited in Paris. The artwork was part of an important series of paintings by Modigliani, which gave the traditional nude a Modern feel. It is an Expressionist artwork which was the biggest painting that Amedeo Modigliani ever produced.

In 2015, Christie’s auctioned off this singular piece for an astonishing $170.4 million dollars. Now as notorious for its high price tag as its capacity to scandalize art fans back in 1917, it’s a perfect example of the artist’s unique portraiture style, which was largely centered on women with almond-shaped eyes and elongated face shapes. His paintings and sculptures challenged Western norms of beauty.  The artist met a tragic end at the early age of 35, due to tuberculosis. After his passing, his lover, who was expecting a baby, committed suicide.

This masterpiece was purchased by a man named Liu Yiqian, who use to drive a cab. He is renowned for paying record prices to access exceptional paintings.

8. Les Femmes d’ Alger (Version O) by Pablo Picasso – Value $179.4 Million