No one managed to avoid the sarcastic jokes and condescending remarks of Edgar Degas. Everybody got it in the neck: artists and writers, critics and politicians; admiring biographers and chroniclers of Impressionism even recorded excerpts of Degas's conversations in cafes and at the exhibitions.
When Pablo Picasso settled in Montmartre, there had been legends about Edgar Degas. Residents of the commune Bateau-Lavoir, their guests and friends (poets and artists) spent evenings "playing Degas". The point of the game was to insult each other in a perfectly calm voice and as politely and secular as possible.

When the house is under repair, the true artists paint from nature! Caillebotte submitted his painting Les raboteurs de parquet (The Floor Scrapers) to the jury of the Salon, the official exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. The work was rejected, but it caught the attention of Edgar Degas and Auguste Renoir, who encouraged Caillebotte to exhibit with the impressionists. The painting became one of the sensations of the Second Impressionist exhibition in 1876! And the reviews were mixed: the admirers appreciated it being "beautifully truthful and accurate", the critics deemed it "unfinished, vulgar and anti-artistic", and Émile Zola denounced this work as being "photographic" and "bourgeois." Now this painting is considered to be one of the pearls of the Musée d'Orsay collection.

Rembrandt began to accept students, barely out of adolescence. The first apprentice of the 21-year-old painter was Gerrit Dou, who at that time was not yet 15 years old. It seems that Rembrandt never took beginners. A pupil’s parents had to pay the artist an annual tuition fee of 100 guilders. Rembrandt’s students learned by copying their master’s works and, later, by painting and drawing their own variations based on them. They had to work in an attic in separate cubicles partitioned by sailcloth or paper.

In 1818, Théodore Géricault read a book about the terrible story of the raft of Méduse: the French frigate crashed, of the 147 passengers set adrift on an open raft, only 15 survived – the others had been killed or thrown overboard by their comrades; some resorted to cannibalism to survive. This terrible story delighted the artist: he finally found the plot for a big painting! Big in all senses: Géricault started working on a painting which was more than seven meters long.
But the artist was only 27. How could he keep himself from going to parties and devote all his time and effort to the painting? Géricault shaved his head bald. At that time, it was impossible to dally with ladies, drink sparkling wine and crack jokes in the salons, while having a buzz cut. He locked himself in the studio with the help of his socially unacceptable hairstyle.

The "Retrospective Bust Of A Woman", created by Salvador Dalí in 1933 for the Surrealist exhibition in Pierre Colle Gallery (Paris) is quite original. On the porcelain bust of a woman, there is a loaf of bread (a surreal cap!) and a bronze ink-pot – the image of L'Angélus by Jean-Francois Millet. Plus, ants on the face, a paper "scarf", corn on the shoulders – well, just a parody of fashion! The original of which was spoiled... by the dog of Picasso. The artist visited the exhibition with his pet, and the dog devoured the loaf! The whole idea was actually wasted... Now its reconstruction with a fake loaf is in the Salvador Dalí Theater Museum in Figueres.

The Russian artist had a legendary exclusive visual memory. One day, into the hometown of Vrubel, Saratov, they brought a large-scale copy of the "Last Judgment" fresco by the great Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo. The future brilliant Russian artist was just Misha then, he was 9 years old. The boy took pencils and brushes at the age of five, so he hastened to look at the work, housed in the church, together with his father, and for a long time he studied every detail of it, even though his father called him to return home. Afterwards, having retired to his nursery, he reproduced the seemingly impossible for the child composition with masterful precision.

Ellen Andrée is a famous Parisian actress who performed in the Palais-Royal and in the bar at the Folies-Bergère. She was a model for Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Édouard Manet, and Edgar Degas; she also spent time with the artists and poets in the café New Athens, which was unprecedented audacity for the time. Ladies could visit drinking establishments only accompanied.
The painting L'Absinthe, for which Andrée posed together with the artist Marcellin Desboutin, also negatively affected her reputation. It caused a big fuss; the painting was called disgusting and immoral, they saw a challenge in it and, of course, suspected models of heavy drinking. Edgar Degas had to make an official statement that neither Ellen, nor Marcellin was an alcoholic – they just perfectly played their roles. To make up for such a blow to her reputation, Degas even offered Ellen one of his works as a gift.

At first, Edgar Degas's sculpture The Little Fourteen Year Old Dancer got the negative public reaction. "She resembles a monkey, an Aztec, a fetus. If she were smaller, one would be tempted to enclose her in a glass jar of alcohol," said one of the critics. Another reviewers described her as "astoundingly ugly" while her forehead and lips were said to be "marked with a profoundly vicious character". Yet, now The Little Fourteen Year old Dancer is considered to be one of Edgar Degas' masterpieces. The model for the statue was Marie Geneviève van Goethem. Before sculpting the piece, Degas had drawn and painted her more than seventeen times, both clothed and nude. The artist had planned to show his artwork in 1880, at the Fifth Impressionist exhibition in Paris, but by the time of the opening he was not satisfied with his sculpture. It was shown a year later – dressed in a muslin skirt with a satin hair ribbon.

Did you know that Auguste Renoir has the most organized and active opponents? In the past several years, Renoir Sucks At Painting movement has been demanding removal of the artist’s works from museums and staging demonstrations (not particularly crowded, but very reckless). They usually hold homemade signs reading "God Hates Renoir" and "Stop Aesthetic Terrorism". The community has an eponymously-named page on Instagram, where users post their own photos with Renoir's most awful (in their opinion) paintings in the background.
Admittedly, the activists have nothing against his Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette or La Grenouillère. All protests are focused mainly on the late works of the aging Renoir, when all his characters began to look the same, pursuing the artist's conceptual ideal.

When Paul Cézanne didn't like his own painting, he would just throw it out of the window. Old olives growing under the windows of the artist's studio were hung with unfinished still lifes. Sometimes Paul would think about some of his not completely hopeless sketches that had been hanging in the garden for several months and put them back on his easel. "Son, we must get down the Apples from the cherry tree; I think I'll work on that study some more, " he told his son, who brought a French art dealer Ambroise Vollard to Aix-en-Provence for new paintings.

We are lucky enough to know this artist under such a short name "Picasso". After all, you would say his full name at least for five minutes, and it would be even more challenging to remember it! The full name of Picasso consists of twenty-three words: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso. After the Spanish tradition, Picasso received two family names for the first names of his parents: his father Ruíz and his mother Picasso. Well, it is rather difficult to say why he received such a long font name. Probably, the parents decided to list many deceased and living relatives of the family in it in order to honour their memory.

The phenomenal Erté (Roman Tyrtov), one of the icons of Art Deco, not only designed exquisite and extravagant clothes for fashionistas, but also wore them. Once, American costume designer Howard Greer met Erté wearing his pyjamas with a hem and collar, simulating ermine. In 1926, he appeared at Paris Opera ball wearing a brocade bullfighter costume of his own design. He decorated a huge cape with fresh roses, which he threw into the crowd, going down the stairs. Erté had this passion for bright clothes and extravagant accessories till the end of his life. He wore his costumes “with a unique grace with which wild cat wears its fur,” wrote one of the journalists.

Hurrying from Germany in 1914, Wassily Kandinsky left most of his paintings to Gabriele Münter, with whom he was betrothed. A few years later, he returned to Germany with his wife Nina, and asked Münter to return his works. But Gabriele refused, for he promised to marry her! Now she left his canvases for herself. Kandinsky led the trial for 5 years, but eventually he officially recognized hi ex-bride Münter as the legal owner of the paintings. She did not sell the pictures, and at the age of 80, in 1957, she transferred the whole collection (54 works!) to the Lenbachhaus Gallery.

This is about a magnificent canvas of a mystical genre uncharacteristic for Aivazovsky. Being inspired by the biblical line "and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters", he embodied it on canvas. Pope Gregory XVI wanted to acquire the painting. Aivazovsky's studio was visited by endless processions consisting of prelates, cardinals and other high-ranking officials, but all these commissions could not find any flaws in the work that would make it unworthy of the Vatican gallery. The Pope bought the painting and awarded Aivazovsky with a golden medal. In this regard, Gogol, with whom Aivazovsky became friends in Rome, came up with a great pun: "Well done, Vania! You, a little man from the banks of the distant Neva, came to Rome and your Chaos immediately caused a chaos in the Vatican! And it's frustrating that if it had been me, a scribbler, who caused chaos in the Vatican, I would have been thumped, and Vania Aivazovsky was given a golden medal ... "

Arkhip Kuindzhi adored birds. He considered himself a “birds' chosen one”, said that the birds understood his speech and let him pet them. Usually laconic Arkhip Kuindzhi became extremely talkative when it came to birds. He spent hours sitting on the roof of his house, "talking" with pigeons and crows. Every month he bought 60 French buns, up to 10 kg of meat and 6 sacks of oats to feed his feathered friends. Once the illustrator Pavel Scherbov published a caricature depicting Kuindzhi giving an enema to a bird. They say that Arkhip Kuindzhi, deprived of sense of humour, got terribly offended.

By the age of 20, Matisse had studied to be a lawyer and got the right to start his own practice, which caused his return to his native wilderness in the north of France. But suddenly he was overtaken by an attack of appendicitis, and Matisse had to undergo several surgical interventions (it was 1889, and the patient had complications). To entertain his son and cheer him up, his mother brought paints to the hospital, he enthusiastically began to copy the old postcards. The mood improved so much that after the hospital Matisse headed straight for Paris, having decided to become an artist. His father, the shopkeeper was very upset: he hoped that the son would become a decent person.

William Turner was very reluctant to part with his paintings: he wanted the best of them to be preserved for descendants in a single collection. And if the thing was dear to him, willing to scare away a persevering buyer, he inflated the price wickedly. So it happened to "Dido building Carthage". In the bidding process, the price rose from 500 to 2,000 pounds and the angry buyer blurted out: "What are you going to do with it?" "They'll bury me in it, what else?" Turner joked spitefully. The artist's phrase became popular, so that when Turner died, the gossip spread across London. The abbot of St. Paul's Cathedral, having learned about the death of the artist, allegedly stated indignantly that he would not read the funeral prayer, if Turner was wrapped in a picture!

Apart from domestic animals, Pablo Picasso always had many birds. The French photographer and sculptor Michel Sima found a little owl in Antibes and gave it to Picasso. It was brought from Antibes to Paris, and lived in the artist's kitchen, sharing a cage with canaries and doves. The owl had a wild temper and rejected everyone except for Picasso. And the artist, known for his Dove of Peace drawing, also painted owls.

The famous American photo artist Richard Prince sold Instagram online pictures of Selena Mooney for 90 thousand dollars at the exhibition in the Gagosian gallery. Now she sells the same photos for 90 dollars. This is her Roland for an Oliver dor his plagiarism. Prince took her photo for his project without permission, and yet he steals other people's works in a broad manner since the 1970's – such a "pop art trick"! Sometimes it comes to trial, but without much shock for the "projector": one of the verdicts was simply canceled a couple of years ago.

Auguste Renoir liked painting pictures but didn't like talking about them. The connoisseurs of art, who grilled the artist about the sublime even on a train, would often hear his: "Sorry, I know nothing about high art, my works are pornographic". Yet, there's a grain of joke in every joke. The same Renoir was quite serious when saying: "I loved women even before I learned to walk... I never think I have finished a nude until I think I could pinch it.”