Trivia time: 20 questions on art

It’s time to challenge friends or family with Expat Living’s Weekly Quiz. You can get together with a small group, have a glass of wine and try these out – or stick to Zoom, of course! This week, it’s 20 trivia questions on art and artists. 

#1 Who painted the Mona Lisa?

#2 The same artist, according to a popular rumour, spent 12 years just painting Mona Lisa’s lips. That’s not true, but how long did he take to do the whole painting, 48 days, four years or 18 years?

#3 What do you call the Indonesian art of decorating cloth with wax and dye?

#4 English artist Andy Brown stitched together a thousand used tea bags to create a portrait of which royal figure? 

#5 Match the cartoonists with their comic strip creations: Charles M Schulz, Gary Larson, Bill Watterson; The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts.

#6 Michelangelo’s statue of David has a disproportionately large what: big toe, belly button or head?

#7 What do you call the aesthetically-pleasing out-of-focus blurring of some areas of a photograph: rokeh, nokeh or bokeh? 

#8 Soup cans are synonymous with which artist?

#9 What do you call the wooden board that an artist mixes and arranges paints on? (Half a mark for the word and another half for spelling it correctly)

#10 The Kiss is a famous gold-toned painting by Austrian artist Gustav who?

#11 Who was the lead male actor in The Thomas Crown Affair, a 1999 romantic thriller about a billionaire who steals a painting from a gallery?

#12 Which type of paint dries more quickly, acrylic or oil?

#13 Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, better known as Pablo Picasso, was born in which century?

#14 Name the anonymous British artist who, in 2017, hid a paper-shredder in a painting frame so that the painting would be shredded after selling at auction. (Hint: He has a one-word name starting with “B”.)

#15 What is the word for the Japanese art of paper folding?

#16 List the following three art movements or periods in chronological order: Pop Art, Realism, Baroque.

#17 What’s the two-word name for a painting or drawing of a group of everyday objects placed together? 

#18 Match the city with the gallery: Uffizi, Rijksmuseum, Tate; Amsterdam, London, Florence.

#19 What does Italian artist Maurizio Savini make sculptures out of: chewing gum, cow manure or chicken gizzards?

#20 The four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles take their names from Renaissance painters. Name two of them. 

BONUS

Who am I?
(If you can answer correctly after the first clue, you get 10 points, but you lose a point for each additional clue you require to identify the person.)

I was born in 1904 and died in 1989. (10)
I believed that I was the reincarnation of my deceased older brother. (9)
One of my earliest works is Landscape Near Figueras, which I did at age six, and which hangs in a museum today. (8)
I was twice expelled from art school in Spain. (7)
I went on to become a key figure in the Surrealist movement. (6)
I designed the logo for the Spanish lollipop brand Chupa Chups. (5)
I’m perhaps best known for a painting that features melted clocks. (4)
I’m also known for my extravagantly long, thin moustache. (3)
My first name is Salvador. (2)
I am __________. (1)

All the answers (no cheating!)

#1 Leonardo da Vinci
#2 Four years
#3 Batik
#4 Queen Elizabeth II
#5 Charles M Schulz, Peanuts; Gary Larson, The Far Side; Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
#6 Head (it’s thought the artist did this to compensate for the fact that people would be viewing the statue from afar and from below)
#7 Bokeh
#8 Andy Warhol
#9 Palette
#10 Klimt
#11 Pierce Brosnan
#12 Acrylic
#13 19th (25 October 1881)
#14 Banksy
#15 Origami
#16 Baroque (1600-1750), Realism (1848-1900), Pop Art (1960s)
#17 Still life
#18 Uffizi, Florence; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Tate, London
#19 Chewing gum
#20 Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael

BONUS: Salvador Dali

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