{"id":27415,"date":"2025-09-17T08:29:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T08:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/27415\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T08:29:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T08:29:13","slug":"today-in-history-september-17-chimpanzee-blows-the-minds-of-art-critics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/27415\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in History &#8211; September 17: Chimpanzee blows the minds of art critics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Art critics were bemused but impressed when an art exhibition from a chimpanzee opened on September 17, 1957.<\/p>\n<p>Congo the chimpanzee had taken to drawing and painting as a two-year-old at London Zoo.<\/p>\n<p>A year later, Congo had enough of a collection of work to form an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/1239e2bd-2713-46df-8bc5-f17e913e5bff.jpeg\"   alt=\"Congo became one of the most famous exhibits at London Zoo.\"\/>Congo became one of the most famous exhibits at London Zoo. (Getty)<\/p>\n<p>While Congo was never drawing anything of distinguishable form, critics were struck by its vibrant abstract paintings.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is comforting to know for certain, as one gazes at a painting, that it contains no image,&#8221; The Times of London reported.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;One can then appreciate, with becoming innocence, the enthusiasm of a scientist for that painting&#8217;s abstract patterns.<\/p>\n<p>And it attracted its share of supporters. Both Pablo Picasso and Prince Philip were fans of the chimpanzee&#8217;s work.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/2cb0db79-c5ce-4fb0-8777-a69bc227f3cf.jpeg\"   alt=\"Though the paintings were never of anything, they did have a sense of deliberate colour.\"\/>Though the paintings were never of anything, they did have a sense of deliberate colour. (Congo the chimpanzee)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People would imagine he&#8217;d just grab a pencil or a paper, but he&#8217;d have several colours and he&#8217;d think before he painted,&#8221; gallery director James Mayor said.<\/p>\n<p>Congo would reportedly throw fits when a painting was taken away before it was finished.<\/p>\n<p>And when Congo was done, it could not be persuaded to keep painting.<\/p>\n<p>Over the course of its career, he painted over 400 paintings.<\/p>\n<p>Zoologist Desmond Morris described Congo as &#8220;terrifyingly intelligent&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Congo died of tuberculosis in 1964 at the age of 10.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/25027e97-f57a-4359-8704-bb9efeef7b7e.jpeg\"   alt=\"Congo would paint deliberate strokes of colour.\"\/>Congo would paint deliberate strokes of colour. (Congo the chimpanzee)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Congo&#8217;s ability to make a controlled abstract pattern and then to vary it in different ways meant that inside the ape brain there was already an aesthetic sense \u2014 very primitive but nevertheless present in a non-human species,&#8221; he told ArtNet.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Watching him paint was like witnessing the birth of art.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Then, more than 40 years after its death, much of the work went up for auction, alongside artists like Pierre Auguste Renoir and Andy Warhol.<\/p>\n<p>While the Renoir and Warhol works up for auction did not sell, three of Congo&#8217;s artworks sold for five figures.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/e0774f0f-3e28-4955-a090-793216dcd574.jpeg\"   alt=\"Congo started painting at two but was dead at 10.\"\/>Congo started painting at two but was dead at 10. (Getty)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art critics were bemused but impressed when an art exhibition from a chimpanzee opened on September 17, 1957.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-27415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}