"If it was an angry young man like Amitabh Bachchan (Bollywood acting legend who rose to fame in the 1970s), they would paint his face red with anger and they would use techniques like painting over the canvas with a knife to give him a more rugged, macho look, " Jethwani explained.

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He played the publicity game with aplomb, convincing interviewers that he had been in rather more fistfights than he had, and that his hobby was knife-throwing. (It was painting.) He bought a horse farm in Vermont and a mansion in Bel-Air.

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Lucy, in a late painting, is not her lover but her executioner, pressing a knife to her bosom.

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In 1975, Rembrandt's priceless painting "The Nightwatch" was slashed by an unemployed teacher with a kitchen knife in Amsterdam.

CNN: Monday,