I hope there is a person out there who laughed their ass off about purposely hanging that upside down and no one noticing for decades
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Abstract painting hung upside-down get a shrug from me.
Representational art hung upside-down? Now that’s a giggle.
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Maybe it was upside down in his studio! 
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Who placed the wire/mounting hardware? Was it the artist or the gallery? Entirely possible it was upside down on the easel for a time because it would be easier to access the area he was working on.
Also - when it comes to this sort of thing - orientation isn’t really that important.
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That’s bound to be the theme of at least one carnival float next year.
Possibly at Cologne, though.
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" Le Bateau caused a minor stir when the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which housed it, hung the work upside-down for 47 days in 1961 until Genevieve Habert, a stockbroker, noticed the mistake and notified a guard. Habert later informed *The New York Times, which in turn notified Monroe Wheeler, the Museum’s art director. As a result, the artwork was rehung properly."
What a tortuous chain of events; it could be the plot to a Wes Anderson film. I’d like to see Adrien Brody cast as “the guard”, and Tild Swinton as “the stockbroker, Genevieve Habert”.
@Mister44 Orientation is, I hear, a Social Construct.
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˙ǝɯ oʇ ǝuıɟ sʞooן ƃuıʇuıɐd ǝɥ⊥
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How about rotating it by 90° four times a year.
Make it an event, a party to celebrate art, artists and the people who enjoy them. And let the art dealers pay for it.
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The joke is still on the gallery, the image is still 90 degrees out of true; Mondrian created it as a table cloth.
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Or a ceiling painting to decorate the bridge of - you know what, scratch that.
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That is not true.
Humans have a primal understanding of color, composition, etc. of the world around them. Art works to support or offset our expectations.
There is a significant difference in how that piece of art is perceived, depending on whether the far-apart yellow or the close-together blue dominates the upper part of the canvas.
One could argue for either orientation, but the point is the artist would have had a specific orientation in mind, and created the piece based on that.
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Jimmy Hill, Jimmy Hill, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy; Jimmy
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Fair point, but I’d argue with most of Mondrian works and some other artists, the composition is equally strong regardless of orientation (or at least in multiple orientations.)
I am not sure how Mondrian worked, if he rotated canvas to better access specific areas, whether the “up” and “down” was predetermined. But I do know artists like Pollack didn’t have a set orientation while working on his works. He worked around the whole piece. Certainly the dimensions usually dictated a landscape format vs portrait, but IIRC my modern art history classes, he would sometimes decide on proper orientation after the fact.
You’re right an artist usually has a specific orientation in mind either before, during, or after the piece is completed. I am not suggesting Pollack or Mondrian didn’t usually have a “proper” orientation in mind. But it isn’t always clear if they did, and I don’t think the artwork suffers from a different orientation in some cases. I used to look at a lot of abstract expressionism and I would often turn the books around to see how orientation changed the composition. I was trying to “get” what makes good composition. And in some works you can definitely find a clear "winner’. But other times I felt more than one option were equally strong.
As with all art, it is subjective, YMMV.
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Alternative headline: “Mondrian Painting Takes On A Whole New Meaning.”
Alternative headline: “Mondrian Painting’s Meaning Just as Obscure as Ever.”
@the_borderer ISWYDT. Well played.
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And when the clocks go back?
(sorry, trying to be topical).
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