‘Arthur’ Predicted Mondrian Painting Was Upside Down 25 Years Ago
Images via Arthur YouTube channel and 146580657 © Dmirtiy Lishik | Dreamstime.com
As the author E.A. Bucchianeri famously wrote, “Art is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone will have their own interpretation.” For 75 years, Piet Mondrian’s New York City I has been displayed the other way around at its showcases in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the German Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (NRW), and observers have been none the wiser, interpreting the work differently from the artist.
As it turns out, a children’s animated series has been inadvertently hinting at the gaffe for 25 years. In Arthur’s 1997 episode Binky Barnes, Art Expert, the protagonist and his friends go on a field trip to the Elwood City Art Museum, where a Mondrian-like painting can be seen. Binky notices that something is off with the work, and he refers to footage of the artist putting up the painting to prove that it was indeed hung upside down.
The “art expert” then turns the artwork around to return it to its intended orientation.
Arthur questioned how to correctly display a Mondrian painting over 25 years ago https://t.co/8ZUuNNrsFB pic.twitter.com/Bbzv2LrFuY
— Bryan Hilley (@bbhilley) October 28, 2022
Binky is kind of a bully and isn’t the smartest kid in class, but he does have a softer side that he’s afraid of showing to his peers. Not only is he afraid of the dark, but according to the Arthur Wiki, he enjoys the classics such as Bach and Beethoven music. “He seems to thoroughly enjoy art,” notes the site, alluding to the character’s show of art knowledge in the aforementioned episode.
Likely a spoof of how modern art rarely makes sense to the untrained eye, the scenario turned out to foreshadow reality. It’s as though Arthur is the art world’s answer to The Simpsons and its countless predictions (Art… Arthur… coincidence?).
Just pointing out that PBS's Arthur predicted a badly oriented Mondrian in 1997 https://t.co/jxaIYikJTH pic.twitter.com/hswVFhybSm
— Chris B. (@QuaereMe) October 31, 2022
The real Mondrian painting was only discovered to be upside down after Susanne Meyer-Büser, the curator for a new dedicated exhibit at the NRW, looked into the artist’s evolving artistic ethos ahead of the retrospective. It struck her that the work’s thicker lines were supposed to match those in the similar New York City painting.
A photograph dating back to 1944 also revealed that the work was originally positioned with the stripes at the top. The current orientation, on the other hand, depicts them at the bottom.
Bryan Hilley, a collections assistant at Nasher Museum of Art, tells Hyperallergic that he was in awe of how both reality and fiction determined the painting’s correct stance after “research and primary documentation.”
While the obvious next step is to turn New York City I back to its original position, unlike the cartoon, it’s easier said than done with the real Mondrian. The artwork is in a delicate state, and executing something as simple as rotating the piece could result in damage.
Be that as it may, this is an example of life imitating art. The writers at Arthur were the first to call it, and they must be resonating with this meme so deeply right now:
View this post on Instagram
Remember the episode of Arthur where Arthur and his friend see a Mondrian painting, and have absolutely no idea how to process it? pic.twitter.com/UhkD5Sh87J
— FriskyWoods (@FriskyWoods) October 23, 2019
Binky Barnes convinced a museum that they incorrectly displayed a Mondrian painting on Arthur (TV show) pic.twitter.com/5n8ssLq06S
— Daniel Carlin (@OhMyCarlin) December 29, 2020
[via Hyperallergic and Bryan Hilley/Twitter, images via various sources]
