Disumbrationism was a hoax

Hoax

A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...

 masquerading as an art movement

Art movement

An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a restricted period of time, or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years...

 that was launched in 1924 by Paul Jordan-Smith

Paul Jordan-Smith

Paul Jordan-Smith was an American journalist, editor, and author from Los Angeles, California.He produced an all-English edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton, and, posing as the fictitious "Pavel Jerdanowitch", founded the Disumbrationist school of modern painting as a hoax....

, a novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

ist, Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 scholar, and authority on Robert Burton

Robert Burton (scholar)

Robert Burton was an English scholar at Oxford University, best known for the classic The Anatomy of Melancholy. He was also the incumbent of St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford, and of Segrave in Leicestershire.-Life:...

 from Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

.

Annoyed at the cold reception his wife's realistic

Realism (visual arts)

Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...

 still life

Still life

A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made...

s had received from an art exhibition jury, Jordan-Smith sought revenge by styling himself as "Pavel Jerdanowitch" (Cyrillic: Па́вел Йердaнович), a variation on his own name, and entering a blurry, badly painted picture of a Pacific islander

Pacific Islands

The Pacific Islands comprise 20,000 to 30,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean. The islands are also sometimes collectively called Oceania, although Oceania is sometimes defined as also including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago....

 woman brandishing a banana skin, under the title "Exaltation". He made a suitably dark and brooding photograph of himself as Jerdanowitch, and submitted the work to the same group of critics as representative of the new school, "Disumbrationism." He explained "Exaltation" as a symbol of "breaking the shackles of womanhood." To his dismay, if not to his surprise, the Disumbrationist daub won praise from the critics who had belittled his wife's realistic painting.

More Disumbrationist paintings followed: a composition of zig-zag lines and eyeballs he called "Illumination"; a garish picture of a black woman doing laundry which he called "Aspiration", and which a critic praised as "a delightful jumble of Gauguin, Pop Hart and Negro

Negro

The word Negro is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance, whether of African descent or not...

 minstrel

Minstrel

A minstrel was a medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories of distant places or of existing or imaginary historical events. Although minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. Frequently they were retained by royalty...

sy, with a lot of Jerdanowitch individuality"; "Gination," an ugly, lopsided portrait

Portrait

thumb|250px|right|Portrait of [[Thomas Jefferson]] by [[Rembrandt Peale]], 1805. [[New-York Historical Society]].A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness,...

; and a painting named "Adoration", of a woman worshipping an immense phallic idol, which was exhibited in 1927.

The same year, Jordan-Smith confessed to the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

 that the Disumbrationist paintings were meant as a spoof

Parody

A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

.(27 January 1931). Pictures Painted to "Show Up" the Critics Bring Fame to Mythical Modernistic Artist, Lawrence Journal-World

Lawrence Journal-World

The Lawrence Journal-World is a daily newspaper published in Lawrence, Kansas by The World Company.-History:Though the Journal-World title only came into existence in 1911, according to the volume number of the current masthead of the paper, the paper dates itself back to 1858.The Simons family...

 (Associated Press

Associated Press

The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

)

Since 2006 there has been held a yearly a painting contest in memory of Paul Jordan-Smith and the disumbrationist school of arts: the "International Pavel Jerdanowitch Painting contest". The winners were Kurt Hinterbichler in 2006, kunst/gruppe olga in 2007 and Olga Krolik in 2008.

External links

• The Disumbrationist School of Art at the Museum of Hoaxes
  Museum of Hoaxes
  The Museum of Hoaxes is a website created by Alex Boese in 1997 in San Diego, California as a resource for reporting and discussing hoaxes and urban legends, both past and present....
  
  
• The Disumbrationist School of Painting
• Pavel Jerdanowitch Painting Contest in memory of Paul Jordan-Smith aka Pavel Jerdanowitch and the disumbrationist school of arts