I enjoy art, but I don't have a lot of respect for the profession of "artist". Art, like legislation, seems like something that's best created by people who are otherwise capable of doing more important things. Art is a fine hobby, even noble, but just about everyone I've met who has tried to make a career of it has been lazy and pretentious. Anyway, I say all that to point to this story about an "art expert" who got fooled by a chimpanzee.
A GERMAN art expert was fooled into believing a painting done by a chimpanzee was the work of a master.The director of the State Art Museum of Moritzburg in Saxony-Anhalt,
Katja Schneider, suggested the painting was by the Guggenheim Prize-winning artist Ernst Wilhelm Nay.
(HT: James Taranto.)
I read a story once about an Italian artist who sold his poop in cans as art to a British museum. But he didn't have the technical aspects down quite right, and some of the cans exploded.
Thinking of that man, I always wonder: Was he truly deluded and pretentious, or was he just a really good con man? Or more broadly, if you could read the minds of a cross-section of professional modern artists, how many would truly believe that they were producing art, and how many would see the whole thing as a scam?
After a bit of Googling, I realize that that story is from Dave Barry: http://www.poly.rpi.edu/article_view.php3?view=1697&part=1
And since the artist died long before anyone sold the cans, he must have been a true loon, rather than a mere con artist.