Art Trivia is a pocket mental effect by David Jonathan and Nikolas Mavresis, and produced by TCC of China.

In effect, the performer first engages the spectators with an art trivia regarding 5 world famous art paintings before revealing each of the paintings.

For example, the spectators have to guess what famous art painting is “a symbol of anxiety and a propular emoji”.  The answer is “The Scream” by Edvard Munch.

Each of the trivia is printed on the back of a poker-sized black envelope.  The envelope is turned over to reveal the painting refered to inside the envelope.

Famous paintings are known to be worth a lot of money.  Criminals are known to make forgeries out of these paintings so that they can sell them for large sums of money.  The fogeries are so well done that they look quite like the original ones.

Altogether, 5 famous paintings are shown.  They are Mona Lisa, The Scream, American Gothic, Girl With A Pearl Erring, and The Son Of Man.

A spectator chooses, say, Girl With A Pearl Erring to be the forged painting.  The performer takes out the 4 paintings that were not chosen.  Each of them has a large red “X” on their backs.  The selected painting is turned over to reveal a green “tick” symbol on its back.  The spectator has apparently chosen the only painting with the tick symbol on the back.

Now comes a special twist ending.  The spectator has chosen the only original painting that has a “tick” symbol on its back.  Each of the other 4 paintings with the “X” symbol on the back is turned over to reveal a carton version of the respective original painting.  How could the spectator miss such obvious fakes?

You receive everything complete ready to perform.  They comprise 5 special envelopes, 5 original version of the paintings, and 5 cartoon version of the paintings.  You also get a link to a 23 minutes video tutorial conducted by David Jonathan and Nikolas Mavresis.

This is an interesting pocket mental effect with a kicker ending that nobody sees coming.  It is easy to do and does not have any performing angles to worry about.  It is almost self-working.  You only need to know how to handle the envelopes properly.  (Rated 4.5/5 stars)