Most of these works are lost and forgotten, but some are considered incomplete masterpieces by masters such as Da Vinci and Mozart. The following are the ten most famous unfinished works of art in history.
1. Bruce Lee's Game of Death
By the early seventies, Bruce Lee had already made three hit movies and was quickly gaining a reputation as one of the most exciting martial artists in the world. In 1972, Lee began filming Game of Death, the ultimate expression of Jeet Kune Du, a fighting style he had been perfecting for years. However, halfway through filming, Lee was given the shot of a lifetime to star in Enter The Dragon, and production on Game of Death was put on hold while he worked on it. Enter The Dragon would ultimately cement Lee's stardom, but before he could return to work on Game of Death, he died mysteriously of cerebral edema at the age of 32. Five years after Lee's death, the director of Enter The Dragon put together a working version. Game of Death from newly shot footage using Lee's footage and stand. The final result was considered by many to be a poor representation of Lee's original vision for the film, but the 11 minutes of footage from his original cut is believed to be some of his best work.
2. Palace of Soviets
The Palace of Soviets was a huge architectural project undertaken by the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II. It was a building intended to be an administrative center and congress hall in Moscow and, if completed, would have been the tallest structure in the world. The design of the building was decided through a nationwide public competition in which 272 building concepts were submitted, and after a long judging process, architect Boris Iofan was declared the winner. Construction of the building began in 1937, and by 1941 the massive steel frame of the building was erected. Russia's involvement in World War II brought construction to an abrupt end, and the building's steel frame was eventually cut up, dismantled, and used to build fortifications and railroad bridges in and around Moscow. After the end of the war, there was much talk of completing the project, but the Palace of Soviets was eventually abandoned, although the site was kept open until 1958.
3. Hendrix's First Rays of the New Rising Sun
Hendrix was a prolific songwriter, and after the breakup of his band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, he began work on an ambitious double album, First Rays of the Rising Sun. Unfortunately, Hendrix died of an overdose of sleeping pills before recording could even begin. After Hendrix's death, a years-long legal battle began between his family and his former producer over who owned the rights to the singer's material. The family finally prevailed in 1995, and they hired a select group of recording engineers and producers to rebuild First Rays of the New Rising Sun. The surviving recordings ranged from nearly complete to very rough demos, but in 1997 a shortened version of the album was released that claimed to be as close as possible to Hendrix's original vision.
4. The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Dickens
At the time of his death in 1870, Charles Dickens, author of A Tale of Two Cities, was perhaps the most famous writer in the English language. His last book was The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a murder mystery that was being serialized in a popular magazine when Dickens died at age 58. Dickens was close to finishing the book, but he left no notes or plot sketches, so it has never been known which character committed the murder on which the story is based. A number of writers have attempted to finish a book, often under very strange circumstances. The strangest happened in 1873, when a man named Thomas James claimed to have been written by the ghost of Charles Dickens in a conclusion to the book. Many well-known writers have praised James' version for being remarkably similar to Dickens's own writing style, and over the years his take on the story has circulated in America as the definitive version of the book.
5. Coleridge's Kubla Khan
One of the most famous opening lines in the poem begins, "In Khanadu, Kubla Khan decreed a magnificent dome of pleasure..." Famous poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote the lines in 1797 while on a farm in the English countryside. Coleridge was a prodigious user of the drug laudanum and, as the story goes, he fell asleep while reading a book about the Far East and actually dreamed up lines of a poem. Awaking, Coleridge scribbled down the first 50 or so lines while still in an opium haze, but was interrupted when an unexpected visitor called him on business. Coleridge was only gone for an hour, but when he returned, his vision of a 300-line epic poem had been erased from memory. Coleridge tried to return to work, but eventually gave up in frustration, and "Kubla Khan" remains perhaps the most famous unfinished poem ever written.
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