Interestingly, accidental art is not a new concept born on online forums and cultivated by various subreddits. The idea that art can stem from something completely unintentional can be traced back to Leonardo Da Vinci, who, scientists claim, gave some interesting advice to an artist struggling from creative block.

Christopher Turner, a British writer and art historian, quotes Da Vinci in an essay published on Tate: “If you look upon an old wall covered with dirt, or the odd appearance of some streaked stones, you may discover several things like landscapes, battles, clouds, uncommon attitudes, humorous faces, draperies, etc. Out of this confused mass of objects, the mind will be furnished with an abundance of designs and subjects perfectly new.”

This fresh idea proposed by Da Vinci, Turner argues, encouraged the viewer to search for hidden meaning in chaos. “It referred back to myths about the origin of art in accidental shapes. In De Statua, Leon Battista Alberti supposed that artistic imitation emerged when our ancestors came across a gnarled tree trunk or a piece of clay, whose contours ‘needed only a slight change’ to look strikingly like something else.”

The artists were mesmerized by the idea that natural artifacts and nature as a whole can be full of artistic readymades, “if only you are patient enough to look for them."

Throughout the years, for artists and historians alike, accidental artistic gestures like stains or blots offered a new mode of interpretation. “The meaningless stain, which invites the universal urge to project meaning, is the humble stage on which all arguments about art are rehearsed,” Turner concludes.