April Fool’s Day

If you search the word ‘fool’ on the NGV website you will discover that there appears to be only one work in the collection with ‘fool’ in the title The uselessness of astrology – The stargazer fool by Albrecht Dürer from 1494. This woodcut illustration is one of a series that Dürer made for Sebastian Brant’s allegorical satire Das Narrenschiff or ‘Ship of Fools’. Brant’s book takes up the ‘ship of fools’ trope (originally discussed by Plato in Book VI of the Republic) to unsparingly criticise the weaknesses and vices of his time.  He even conceives of a patron saint of vulgar and coarse people who he calls Saint Grobian.

The concept of foolishness was a frequently used trope in the pre-Reformation period to legitimise criticism. Court fools were given licence to say the ‘unspeakable’ and authors from Erasmus to Martin Luther also used the notion of ‘foolishness’ to put forward contentious views.  Today the use of socio-political satire is commonplace ranging from Shaun Micallef and Charlie Pickering in Australia to John Oliver and Randy Rainbow in America.  But this ‘considered foolishness’ is very different from what happens on April 1 when we are given a short period of licence to be foolish.

April Fool’s Day has been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures around the world.  Although the exact origin remains a mystery, there are a number of possible contenders for this day of pranks and larking about.

Did the day evolve from the Roman festival, Hilaria, (Latin for joyful) which was celebrated in ancient Rome at the end of March by followers of the cult of Cybele  and involved people dressing up in disguises and mocking fellow citizens? Or does the day relate to the vernal equinox – the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere – when Mother Nature fooled people with unpredictable, changing weather?  Or perhaps it dates back to 1582 when France switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent? In the Julian calendar the new year commenced with the spring equinox (around  April 1) but when this changed to January 1 those people who continued to celebrate the new year during March became the butt of jokes and were known as April Fools.

Wherever it comes from, April Fool’s Day is celebrated with long-standing customs around the world. In England there are pre-midday pranks; in Scotland ‘the hunting of the gowk’ (the sending of a silly message from person to person); in Poland and Scandinavia there are public hoaxes; in France, Italy, Belgium, and the French speaking areas of Switzerland and Canada there is a tradition known as poisson d’avril or pesce d’aprile which involves antics with a paper fish; and even in the Ukraine and Lebanon there are instructions to trust nobody!

There have been a number of famous April Fool’s Day art hoaxes: In 1928 the German magazine Uhu  reported that an x-ray analysis of Thomas Gainsborough’s famous painting The Blue Boy  had revealed that the boy in the picture was really a girl.  The x-ray analysis, done to verify the authenticity of the painting, had shown that beneath the top layer of paint, the artist had drawn a picture of a nude female.

In 1935 the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung reported the discovery that Leonardo da Vinci had originally painted the Mona Lisa frowning, not smiling – the overpainted smile being ordered by its then owner, King Franz I. As a result, the conservation department at the Louvre had decided  to restore the painting back to its original condition.  (A similar hoax was published by The Independent  in 1990).

In 1943, 1945 and 1948, Norman Rockwell created covers for the April Fool edition of the Saturday Evening Post.  On each cover the artist placed about 50 ‘mistakes and incongruities’ to challenge readers’ visual skills.

In 1962 a man walking along the beach near the Dutch town of Zandvoort reported a bizarre discovery.  He found a small statue that looked like the famous statues on Easter Island washed up on the beach. Based on its weathered appearance, it seemed that ocean currents had carried it all the way from the South Pacific. Although identified by an expert as an authentic Easter Island artefact, it had been made by a local artist and planted on the beach.

And in 1970 Wisconsin’s Sheboygan Press reported that an anonymous buyer had purchased one of Vincent Van Gogh’s “great masterpieces” and was donating it to the John Michael Kohler Art Center. The work was a “pencil-and-crayon” drawing titled “A Prity Day.” It was purchased for $186,000. Van Gogh created the work in 1860 ostensibly when he was 7 years old.

While I am not aware of any NGV art hoaxes relating to April Fool’s Day, a number of guides have sent me humourous art images which I will share with you to acknowledge the day:

Best wishes for a safe and healthy St Grobian’s Day!