"Women of Algiers (Version O)" by Pablo Picasso set a new world record as the most expensive painting sold at auction. On May 12, 2015 at Christie's auction in New York they paid more than $179 million for it. Previously, the most expensive work sold at auction was Francis Bacon's triptych " Three Studies for Portrait of Lucian Freud". In November 2013, it was auctioned at Christie's for $142.4 million, taking the priority from Edward Munch’s "Scream".

The Austrian Dieter Buchhart combined three generations of modernists in one exhibition "The Masters of Modernism: Edvard Munch, Peder Balke and Per Kirkeby", and showed their art quirks. Thus, the Norwegian artist Peder Balke (1804–1884), liked to draw not only with brushes but also with his fingers dipped in water and paint – he got special color transitions this way. And the famous Norwegian Edward Munch (1863–1944) often painted himself somewhere in the background of the picture, denoting his own presence on the canvases.

The famous Florentine painter of the Pre-Renaissance period Giotto di Bondone once played a trick on his teacher Cimabue Giovanni, and drew a fly on the nose of one of the painted characters. The insect looked so plausible that Cimabue took it for real and tried several times to brush it off from the picture. And only after several unsuccessful attempts, he finally understood what was the matter.

A pleasant surprise: the restorer discovered that the canvas from the London residence of the Dukes of Wellington belongs to the brush of the great Titian, and not an unnamed follower! The painting titled "Titian's Mistress" was believed to have been painted by a follower after the death of the artist in 1576, and did not appear in public for centuries, almost from the time it was stolen from the Royal Spanish Collection and brought to London in the year 1813. What an irony – the duke owned three originals of Titian, and didn’t even know about it! All of them were considered copies.

Aivazovsky resourcefully attracted rich customers. Before the arrival of the guests, the artist's apprentice applied diluted ink or sepia-stains on paper with a sponge for some indeterminate outlines to emerge. Then Aivazovsky cut the paper into small pieces, stained the spots (still a brilliant brush!), to get quite spectacular seascapes with waves and clouds. They were inserted into the frame and presented to every noble person who visited the artist's studio. After that, the "flattered" visitor considered it his duty to buy a big picture from Aivazovsky for hundreds or even thousands of rubles.

One druggist commissioned Paul Gauguin to paint him a picture. "Only you know what, the point is to make the picture simple and clear," he said. In response, Gauguin, without a long thought, drew the "White Horse". Upon seeing the picture, the apothecary exclaimed: "Monsieur, but this horse is green! Have you even seen green horses?!" "Just recall how everything seems green, when you watch the sunset with half-closed eyes in the evening, sitting in a rocking chair," Gauguin retorted. "Well, no, that wasn't the agreement," persisted the druggist, "I need a picture to admire in the daylight with eyes wide open!" And even Gauguin found nothing to object.

Zinaida Serebryakova moved to France in search of work, after the revolutionary peasants plundered her family estate. However, Parisians liked modernist trends, not "romantic realism", the favourite and vivid style of the artist. She went so badly that she had to make paints for herself, as there was no way to buy them. Now her paintings are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Korovin made a name for himself with his stage design for Savva Mamontov's performances (Faust, Aida, etc.). And here's a story told by the stage designer and artist Alexandr Golovin.
Korovin's decorations were huge and the artist got very tired working on them and somehow fell asleep right in his studio, in the middle of the scenery. While sleeping, he accidentally knocked over a pot with white paint which stained the canvases. And while Korovin was sleeping, the carpenters took his decorations to the theatre. The artist rushed there and hid behind a chair, waiting for the reaction of the picky and strict Mamontov. The curtain went up, and everyone gasped in amazed delight – the white flowers decorating the scenery were incredibly beautiful. Mamontov rushed to shake Korovin's hand, congratulating him with extraordinary creative success. "The flowers really came up great," said Korovin calmly, seeing those white spots for the first time.

Frida Kahlo created her biggest and most difficult piece, The Wounded Table, in 1940, experiencing a divorce from Diego Rivera. Being a dedicated Communist, she sent the work to the USSR as "a gift of friendship", but Soviet officials considered it to be an example of "decadent bourgeois formalist art" and unsuitable for public display. In 1955, the painting was shown in Poland in an exhibition, but on the way back to Moscow The Wounded Table disappeared as if into thin air. Years of searching in Europe and America have been unsuccessful. The painting remains the "Holy Grail" for art historians, studying Frida Kahlo's work.

The projects of contemporary creators in Versailles are always bold. In the summer of 2015 in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles near Paris, there was installed a 60-meter steel sculpture, resembling a funnel – a project of the British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor. The sculpture is officially called The Dirty Corner (2011). However, the artist himself dubs the work the “queen's vagina”. He said that it symbolises "the vagina of the queen who took power". The work provoked angry criticism from conservative French commentators who criticized placing The Dirty Corner in such a historic place. This work of art was even subjected to the act of vandalism: the sculpture was spray-painted. The Dirty Corner had to be cleaned.

All Aivazovsky's women were unusual. The artist's first wife, Julia Graves, was a governess. His second wife, Anna Sarkizova, was almost 40 years younger than him. But there was one more woman: ballerina Marie Taglioni, who was 13 years older than Aivazovsky. The story of their relationship is full of legends. Marie Taglioni helped Aivazovsky up when he fell on the road hurt by her carriage. He used to get tickets for Marie's performances, and she bought two of his paintings at the exhibition in Italy... And finally a personal meeting, followed by a lot of happiness, love, painting and ballet. The artist even proposed to his beloved one, but was refused – ballet above all! And, as they say, in memory of Marie, Aivazovsky kept her pink ballet for the rest of his life. When the artist died, his wife Anna burned this memento straight away.

The idea of the main masterpiece of the legendary surrealist Méret Oppenheim was born by chance, during a visit to a Parisian cafe with Pablo Picasso. During the conversation, he noticed the bracelet on Oppenheim's hand, which she made of ordinary wire wrapped in fur. "You can cover anything with fur," he remarked. "Yes, even this cup and saucer," she replied. And in May 1936, at an exhibition of surreal objects in the Paris gallery of Charles Ratton, Oppenheim presented her "Breakfast in Fur" – a cup, a saucer and a spoon, their surface covered with the fur of Chinese gazelle.

It was a time of the Paris Commune. Once the artist was mistaken for a spy drawing a plan of the Seine embankments and was nearly drowned there. Quickly gathered onlookers got excited and demanded immediate reprisal for spying. But a miracle happened: the guards decided to shoot Renoir instead of drowning him. The execution was decided to take place in the city hall, but on the way there Auguste suddenly saw a familiar face – it was Raoul Rigault, a fugitive Republican journalist, whom Renoir saved from starvation and capture a few years before. Now Rigault was a police commissioner and a big man; the guards who caught the artist cheerfully sang Marseillaise and let him free.

Alexander Benois is considered the main critic and opponent of creativity of Kazimir Malevich. Benois considered the works of Malevich a "dead-end branch". It is no surprise, as Malevich called for "stabbing the art of painting and abandoning obsolete Madonnas and Venuses." For Benoit, such a philosophy was blasphemous, so he tirelessly criticized Malevich in his articles and speeches. Here is his review on the "Black Square": this work allegedly had its beginning in an abomination of desolation and through "trampling all the tenderness and love, it will inevitably lead the world to imminent death." Well, has history judged them?

In France, in April 2015, a picture of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, a famous French artist of the 19th century, was discovered – a true miracle of the stock control conducted by Emmanuelle Busline, curator and adviser on historical monuments of the region. In the chapel attic of the former Hotel Dieu Hospital, a large canvas of 4.3 by 3.4 meters was found, rolled up and covered with dust – an image of the Madonna with a baby in her arms and a kneeling king. A well-known plot for the artist!

It is believed that Ingres presented the picture to the city in 1826, when he finished it. It hung in the local church of Saint-Désiré, and in 1936, when the restoration began in the temple, it was transferred to the former hospital and forgotten. It is believed that this is the second version of "The Vow of Louis XIII". The leader of European academicism created the first version in 1824 by the order of the King of France, Charles X.

During the Second World War, the famous fresco "The Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci, which was in Milan in the refectory of the Santa Maria del Grazie church, had a miraculous survival. The church was almost destroyed under bombs, three walls and the roof were blown away. And only the wall with the fresco by Leonardo stood unharmed in some incomprehensible way. The wall with the artist's fresco is the only thing left of the building.

Sometimes not only counterfeits get exposes, but also ... originals! "The Procuress" was considered a forgery by the great falsifier of paintings Hans van Meegeren (famous for his marvelous counterfeit "Vermeers") for a long time. However, after a detailed study, it was authenticated as the genuine picture created by the Dutchman Dirk van Bauburen in 1622. It was probably the first case of an unfairly "slandered" picture faker, who took up the illegal forgery of canvases in order to avenge the world for not recognizing his pictorial talent.

The third place on the list of the most expensive living female artists is taken by Yayoi Kusama with her polka dots obsession. There are polka dots on her canvases, objects and even people... Actually, "obsession" here is far from being a metaphor: the Japanese artist admitted herself into a psychiatric hospital and confessed: "I am deeply terrified by the obsessions crawling over my body, whether they come from within me or from outside. I fluctuate between feelings of reality and unreality. My artwork is an expression of my life, particularly of my mental disease. If it wasn't for art, I would have killed myself long ago." Indeed, the saving art is polka-dotted.

Yvette Guilbert, the Moulin Rouge cabaret singer, hugely impressed the artist Toulouse-Lautrec. He told all his friends about her, took them to concerts, and didn't miss her single performance himself. Once, Toulouse-Lautrec made a charcoal sketch for a poster and sent it to Guilbert with a proposal for collaboration. That sketch was cruel and striking, offensive and sensitive. Guilbert was ready to print the poster, but it turned out that she was the only one who wanted to do it. Her friends and family were offended by that ugly, grotesque caricature, and her entrepreneur threatened to break the contract. Soon Guilbert and Lautrec met in person. He conceived a 14-page album of lithographs dedicated to her – and she agreed to pose. The album appeared to be scandalous – this time the outraged friends recommended Yvette to sue Lautrec without hesitation. Instead, she put her signature on each copy of the album.

The author's copy of the famous "Portrait of Jacopo Foscarini", seized by the Nazis from art historian and collector August Liebmann Mayer, was kept in the Louvre since 1951. The picture, presumably, by Giovanni Batista Moroni was returned to the daughter of the owner, who died in a concentration camp, at a special ceremony at the Jewish Heritage Museum (New York, USA). The undisputed original work is stored in Budapest; it is a notable work in the artist's heritage.