History Main / AccidentalArt

* A stock cliché in ''ComicBook/DisneyMouseAndDuckComics''. Mickey is trying to paint a picture, it gets ruined, but wins an award as such. Goofy wins a poem contest with a grocery list that coincidentally rhymes. Donald has mutilated Gladstone's fashion designs, but he decides to trust his luck and have them displayed anyway, and an expert declares that they're brilliant. (Also how Gladstone designed anything in the first place, in his case, [[InvokedTrope invoking]] luck as his his wont: He'd just make crude doodles and let his assistants make the brilliant designs they saw in them.) And so on.

* ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'': In "Junk Junkies", Heffer contributes to Rocko's garage sale with a melted [[BlandNameProduct G.I. Jimbo action figure]]. [[ChekhovsGag It ends up coming in handy]] when a customer who's spent the whole episode staring at it declares it a brilliant sculpture and buys it from Rocko for [[RightOnTheMoney just the amount he needs to pay off his tab to Pizzaface Pizza]].

** The iconic theme to ''Film/TheTerminator'' has a very strange time signature that [[http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2014/03/02/30-years-later-people-are-still-trying-to-figure-out-the-time-signature-of-the-terminator-theme/ continues to fox listeners]] - apparently due to the artist not quite timing the loop properly, but having the effect of giving the song a strange, inhuman lurch that fits the theme perfectly.
*** It was finally determined to have the ultra-weird signature of 13/16 time in [[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/02/the_time_signature_of_the_terminator_score_is_a_mystery_for_the_ages.html/ this article.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheBeatles'' episode "Twist And Shout," the boys meet a girl at a weirdo art exhibition who wants to unleash her creativity in a modern way. She throws paints at a canvas and the image that comes up is the Mona Lisa.

* A stock cliché in ComicBook/DisneyMouseAndDuckComics. Mickey is trying to paint a picture, it gets ruined, but wins an award as such. Goofy wins a poem contest with a grocery list that coincidentally rhymes. Donald has mutilated Gladstone's fashion designs, but he decides to trust his luck and have them displayed anyway, and an expert declares that they're brilliant. (Also how Gladstone designed anything in the first place, in his case, [[InvokedTrope invoking]] luck as his his wont: He'd just make crude doodles and let his assistants make the brilliant designs they saw in them.) And so on.
* In ''ComicBook/ThePowerpuffGirls'' story "Powerpuff Picasso" (issue #15), the picture Bubbles drew at school is noticed and hailed by an art critic and put on exhibit at the museum. At the end, after numerous attempts to do so, Bubbles explains to everyone that the picture was upside down. Upon turning it right way up, the picture is passed off as bland and uninteresting.
* In a one-page story in ''ComicBook/TheSmurfs'', Painter Smurf's canvas is taken away by the wind and it hits the ground several times, getting all kind of stains. Papa Smurf arrives and thinks his painting is brilliant, asking him how he did it. Painter Smurf replies it was "a little inspiration, a lot of perspiration".
* In "Speck of Trouble" in ''Mad House Comics Digest'' #5 the father of two of the teenage main characters accidentally gets ink splatters on a music sheet while trying to come up with a variation on a Beethoven piece. His children, thinking it's an original composition, try playing it on their instruments and eventually take it to their recording studio which declares that it's the "absolute funkiest."

* In ''Literature/FudgeAMania'' by Creator/JudyBlume, baby Tootsie accidentally walks through spilled paint and makes little footprints across one of Jimmy's father's canvases. He decides to make a series of "Baby Feet" paintings with her as a result. It's even referenced in ''Literature/DoubleFudge'', where Peter's family gets invited to a showing of Mr. Fargo's work, including the now wildly popular Baby Feet paintings.

* In one of the ''Literature/JeevesAndWooster'' stories, a pal of Bertie's is having trouble. He wants to paint portraits, but can't get a commission to paint one because he hasn't painted any. He finally gets a commission to paint a portrait of his uncle and benefactor's first baby. It's so horrible that the uncle calls it a fugitive from the funny papers, and cuts the painter off. Jeeves gets the idea that the character in the portrait could be the root of a series on the funny papers entitled, "The Adventures of Baby Blobb". It's a hit and the painter becomes rich.
* In ''Literature/{{Schismatrix}}'', an entire artificial asteroid with a long stream of extruded plastic and stone head stuck to it (long story) is considered a piece of art by the alien Investors. They even compliment the use of explosions to produce a nice shading technique.
* In one of the ''Literature/ChanurNovels'' the main characters must carry an important ''stsho'' dignitary on their starship as a passenger. Knowing that the stsho love the color white, they get their hands on whatever white furniture and decorations they can and hastily shove them into the stsho's room. It turns out that stsho art consists of abstract designs in infinite shades of white, and they'd created for their passenger a masterpiece of stsho interior design.
* In the ''Literature/ElephantAndPiggie'' book "Elephants Cannot Dance", Gerald's frustrated tantrum at his failure to learn how to dance is interpreted by a pair of passing squirrels as a hot new dance move, "The Elephant."
* In Doug [=McLeod=]'s humorous poem 'Fashion Victim', a fashion student trips onto the runway for his final presentation, which yanks off his trousers in the process. An influential designer in the audience lauds the student's bare legs as a bold new trend, launching his design career
* Done in one ''The Knowledge'' book, dealing with art, in which one artist strikes it rich when the buyer hangs all of his work upside-down.

* In an episode of ''Series/DesigningWomen'' one of the women set her purse down on a pedestal at an art gallery before she went to the bathroom. By the time she returned, the curator sold her purse to someone for $5000.

* Music/DavidWilcox's "Leave It Like It Is" is about the stain caused when a jar of blue paint gets knocked over and splatters on the kitchen wall. The owners of the house decide that the pattern of the splattered paint is so interesting that, rather than cleaning it up, they [[TitleDrop leave it like is]] and eventually give it a title, a frame, and gallery lighting.

* In a ''Webcomic/CheckerboardNightmare'' strip, Chex decides he needs a theme song, so he kidnaps Music/ElectricLightOrchestra's Jeff Lynne to force him to write said theme. Jeff Lynne escapes, but leaves behind a letter denouncing Chex as a "sick bastard". Chex reads the letter and thinks it's the song he asked for.

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "The Tale of Scrotie [=McBoogerballs=]" was a deliberate TakeThat at this along with TrueArtIsIncomprehensible.

* ''WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain'': Brain's plan is to become a famous artist (which he intends to do by predicting the next artistic fad: [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible Donutism]]). This fails, but when Pinky attempts to drink the contents of Brain's brush jar (a milk carton) and promptly spits it out onto a canvas, he accidentally creates a masterpiece.
* ''ComicStrip/DennisTheMenaceUK'' (cartoon adaptation): Dennis wins an art contest on ''Series/BluePeter'' when [[NonHumanSidekick Gnasher]] accidentally gets paint on the other side of the paper he sends off.
* In the ''[[WesternAnimation/DennisTheMenace Dennis the Menace (US)]]'' episode, "Ruff's Masterpiece", Mr. Wilson paints a bouquet of flowers, when Ruff runs across his painting while playing fetch with Dennis, ruining it. When Mr. Wilson tosses the painting out, an art professor thinks it's a masterpiece worthy of being entered in a contest, much to his shock. Mr. Wilson later has another painting made with help from another dog so he can enter the contest as well. His strategy works as he wins the contest, but Ruff causes it to be damaged, [[DisqualificationInducedVictory which leads his painting to be the winner after all]].
* 1970s ''WesternAnimation/FatAlbertAndTheCosbyKids'' cartoon: Fat Albert enters a cooking contest (he's the only male entrant, which was the point of the episode). His attempt at a cake is a disaster: He uses the wrong ingredients in the wrong proportions, and so on. Of course, he wins anyway.

* Played for laughs in ''WesternAnimation/Hero108'' where Lin Chung has no inspiration for his art, yet still manages to produce masterpieces so good that the VillainOfTheWeek does a HeelFaceTurn. When he tries to explain, Commander Ape Truly calls him modest.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'': Angelica is mistaken to be an artist by the mess the babies make in her room and ends up being tasked to paint Charles' den and entered in an art contest by her mother, requiring her to get the babies to go crazy with the paint again.
* One of the live-action bookends of ''Series/TheSuperMarioBrosSuperShow'' had Vincent van Gogh declare Mario's dropped plate of spaghetti as "pure genius!" and then promises Mario a lucrative career as an artist. Luigi eventually discovers that the guy is a scam artist posing as van Gogh, though they really should have been [[DeaderThanDead tipped off that he was a fake much earlier on]].
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Birdz}}'', baby Abby rolls around on a canvas while covered in paint, and Betty is proud of the results.
* ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButtHead'':
** In the episode "Butt is it Art?", the duo climb on a piece of public art behind Van Driessen's back - destroying it in the process. He then turns around and tells his class that the pile of rubble wouldn't be effective art if it wasn't "just so."
** There's also the episode in which they take random, sometimes disgusting pictures of themselves with someone else's camera -- only for the camera's owner to be hailed as a genius when the photos are exhibited.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheBeatles'' episode "Twist And Shout," the boys meet a girl at a weirdo art exhibition who wants to unleash her creativity in a modern way. She throws paints at a canvas and the image that comes up is the Mona Lisa.
-->'''Girl:''' No, no! Not that!
* The first act of the ''WesternAnimation/MrBogus'' episode "[[Recap/MrBogusS1E3ADayAtTheOffice A Day At The Office]]" also featured an example of this trope, after an incident involving Bogus accidentally eating some paints, which prompts him to drink from the water cup, before spitting it out onto the canvas, resulting in a picture of a rainbow. This inspires Mr. Anybody to paint a picture of a beachside setting under a rainbow.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'': In "Binky's Music Madness", Binky doesn't like the Bang on a Can All-Stars for their odd methods of making music. He takes a bunch of random noises and plays it in school as a random band he heard about, and to his surprise, they all like it. The Bang on a Can All-Stars explain to Binky that he actually did put effort into it to make it sound good, and he realizes that experimental music can be cool.
%%Is this a real scene? Might be from The Boy Who Cried Comet or Arthur's Chicken Pox, but I don't remember this. ** An episode has a scene with Buster struggling with trying to find something to paint in art class, then Binky accidentally splatters some paint on Buster's canvas, he nearly scolds Binky before the paint forms into a fiery comet which he likes.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/BigHero6TheSeries'' episode "Failure Mode", during Big Hero 6's first attempt to stop Globby, Fred accidentally incinerates a water fountain, melting it. The next morning, the museum patrons mistake it for a new artwork, which Fred claims credit for.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheBackyardigans'' episode "Who Goes There?", Security Guard Tyrone accidentally splatters paint all over a brand new canvas. However, Curator Tasha likes it, and displays it in the musuem.
* ''WesternAnimation/OneHundredAndOneDalmatiansTheSeries'': The episode "The Artist Formerly Known As Spot" has Spot the chicken mistaken for an art genius by a friend of Cruella's after seeing Spot try to get paint off of herself on a canvas, causing Cruella to kidnap Spot and force her to make paintings for an art show.

* ''WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain'': Brain's plan is to become a famous artist (which he intends to do by predicting the next artistic fad: [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible Donutism]]), this fails but Pinky attempts to drink the contents of Brain's brush jar (a milk carton) and promptly spits it out onto a canvas. Cue this trope.

* One commercial shows someone getting caught in the rain while carrying a painting. The paint starts running, and so the painting is later mistaken for an abstract piece.

Sometimes, accidents happen. However, there are times where a coincidence is just enough to create some paint splatter or sculpture or other art form by accident. People see it, and even if it's not even meant to be art, they'll still think it's brilliant.

When an accident creates a scientific invention it's AccidentalDiscovery.