As Brooke-Hitching points out, the portrait hanging in the Louvre isn’t the only Mona Lisa. The Prado Museum in Madrid houses a version thought to be painted by a member of Leonardo’s workshop at the same time as its more famous counterpart. The work portrays its subject from a slightly different perspective, yet it mirrors every pentimento, or change, seen in Leonardo’s original. It’s not all bad taste, either. My favorite is a horrifying impression of World War I, by Franz Marc, called Fate of the Animals. He painted it in 1913, fully envisioning the coming conflagration throughout Europe. He was then drafted, sent to the front (as a camouflage artist), and was killed at the Battle of Verdun in 1916, at the age of 36. To me, his painting is far more evocative of the chaos and horror of war than Picasso’s Guernica, nearly 30 years later (and which does not make the book). Yet it was done in advance and in a very modern art style. The most interesting section was the last entry, focused on Artificial Intelligence created art. Centered on the 'first' work created this way, the author uses it as a reflection point to consider all that was covered before "the depthless capacity of human imagination" (Pg 243), but what will it like partnered with AIs? Will they be just another tool or medium? Or will AI art b For the benefit of our education in pigment sourcing before the era of Liquitex and Golden, we are treated to lessons about the early manner in which purple, mauve, and brown were crafted. The particular brown used in the artwork under discussion, Martin Drolling’s Interior of a Kitchen, is called Egyptian brown. To assure us that there were persons who shared twenty-first-century sensibilities, Brooke-Hitching offers a charming anecdote. It seems Rudyard Kipling was present when artist Edward Burne-Jones came running down the stairs with a tube of “Mummy Brown” in his hand. The artist exclaimed that the paint was “made of dead Pharaohs” and said he must bury it accordingly. I will admit, I get it. From prehistoric cave art to portraits painted by artificial intelligence, The Madman’s Gallery draws on a remarkable depth of research and variety of images to form a book that surprises at every turn, and ultimately serves to celebrate the endless power and creativity of human imagination.

Consider, for instance, a second-century marble statue of the god Glycon. Discovered beneath a railway station in Romania in 1962, the “curious and confusing” carving’s story “involves a con artist, a snake deity and a hand puppet,” writes Brooke-Hitching. Enter The Madman's Gallery and discover an extraordinary illustrated exhibition of the greatest curiosities from the global history of art, featuring one hundred magnificently eccentric antique paintings, engravings, illustrations, and sculptures, each with a fascinatingly bizarre story to tell. Brooke-Hitching’s new project has a similar ethos, traversing the globe in its exploration of artistic curiosities. In Japan, the author details kusozu, watercolors depicting the nine stages of human decomposition, which “were used to highlight the impermanence and foul nature of the mortal body,” as well as discourage lust among Buddhist monks and devotees.

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This book confirmed that my weird threshold is pretty high. I expected the artwork to be weirder. I really enjoyed the first half of this book but it didn’t keep my interest as much when it made it to more contemporary art. Ultimately, writes Brooke-Hitching, his imagined gallery is one of “stolen art, outsider art, art made to be destroyed and art made from people, scandalous and satirical art, art of the heart and the art of men in flames.” Don't miss the extraordinary new illustrated collection from Edward Brooke-Hitching. The Madman's Gallery draws on a depth of research and images to form a book that surprises at every turn.' * Artists & Illustrators *

In The Madman's Gallery: The Strangest Paintings, Sculptures and Other Curiosities from the History of Art Edward Brooke-Hitching presents another assemblage under a common theme, he has previously published works centered on books, sports, maps and the afterlife.Brought to light from the depths of libraries, museums, dealers, and galleries around the world, these forgotten artistic treasures include portraits of oddballs such as the British explorer with a penchant for riding crocodiles, and the Italian monk who levitated so often he’s recognized as the patron saint of airplane passengers. Discover impossible medieval land yachts, floating churches, and eagle-powered airships. Encounter dog-headed holy men, armies of German giants, 18th-century stuntmen, human chessboards, screaming ghost heads, and more marvels of the human imagination. A captivating odditorium of obscure and engaging characters and works, each expertly brought to life by historian and curator of the strange Edward Brooke-Hitching, here is a richly illustrated and entertaining gallery for lovers of outré art and history. What that last book did for bibliophiles, this new, beautifully produced and elegantly written anthology does for art lovers ... The research that has gone into this is prodigious, but Brooke-Hitching loves storytelling even more than scholarship, and he has a gift for it.' - The Spectator Along the way in this chronological ramble, there is education. At least half the precious art in museums and private collections is fake, according to the Fine Art Expert Institute of Switzerland in a 2014 report. This is a rather enormous percentage, calling into question centuries of collecting. It has always been a problem, and has only increased in significance with the astronomical sums being flung at galleries and auctions today. The chapter on forgers is therefore instructive.

This book focuses on “the oddities, the forgotten, the freakish, all with stories that offer glimpses of the lives of their creators and their eras.” It includes fertility art, doom paintings, revenge art and some artists sneaking portraits of themselves in paintings. There’s a lot of religious inspired art. The most interesting section was the last entry, focused on Artificial Intelligence created art. Centered on the 'first' work created this way, the author uses it as a reflection point to consider all that was covered before "the depthless capacity of human imagination" (Pg 243), but what will it like partnered with AIs? Will they be just another tool or medium? Or will AI art become its own genre?This extraordinary new illustrated exhibition gathers more than a hundred magnificent works, each chosen for their striking beauty, weirdness and the captivating story behind their creation. Restorations of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper have been undertaken since 1726. Currently only 42.5% is Leonardo’s work, 17.5% has been lost and 40% is the work of restorers. Art is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone will have their own interpretation". This quote by E. A. Bucchianeri is as true about life as it is about art. One person's masterpiece is another person's my child could do better. One beholder of art will find beauty in the ugliest of things, and others will see the word beholder and think of one-eyed snake-eyestalks for hair, creatures from Dungeons and Dragons. So everyone has their own opinion on art, be it film, music, literature of pretty pictures and engaging statues, and a lot of people, myself included, like the odd more than we like a simple sketch. Edward Brooke-Hitching in his collection Madman's Gallery: The Strangest Paintings, Sculptures and Other Curiosities from the History of Art offers a companion book to his work on odd literature and books, this time focusing on art pieces from the past to the cutting edge of today.