What makes a person want to destroy a precious work of art?
There are many answers to this question, but politics often comes into play, as in the recent destruction of famous paintings by climate protesters in major European museums; Personal interest can also often be an important factor, with young provocateurs targeting other people's artwork and sometimes even as part of their own artistic practice.
Regardless of its purpose, however, the underlying motivation is similar – to draw attention by destroying the appearance or reputation of a work of art that people are all too familiar with.
Below, we take a look at 20 acts of vandalism in the art world, from iconoclasters to ongoing climate protests.
1. Byzantine iconoclasm campaign, 726–787; 814–842
In 1888, an illustration depicting the destruction of Byzantine icons.
The destruction of works of art did not initially occur in museums. For example, there were many "Buddha extermination campaigns" from the Northern Wei to the Tang Dynasty in China, and there were similar examples in Christian society. The movement that took place in the Byzantine Empire between the 8th and 9th centuries to destroy the icons and holy objects of the Christian Church was essentially a struggle against the ruling forces of the Orthodox Church and the occupation of land by the ecclesiastical monasteries. The Emperor Leo III of Isoria issued a series of decrees in 726 calling for the destruction of religious images or symbols in order to end their worship. As a result, various mosaic frescoes, sculptures, coins and other artistic creations were damaged or completely destroyed on lands under Byzantine control, resulting in incalculable damage to the treasures of early Byzantine art.
2. "Suffragette" targets Velázquez's Venus in the Mirror, 1914
In 1914, after the destruction of a Velázquez work, the National Gallery of England closed itself to the public.
Velázquez, Venus in front of the mirror, circa 1647-1651
Sometimes vandalism is associated with political conflict, as in the case of a suffragette targeting Velázquez's Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery. When Suffragist leader Emmeline Pankhurst was arrested for radically fighting for women's suffrage in Britain, her partner, Mary Richardson, broke Venus in front of the mirror with a knife in protest. Richardson once said, "I tried to destroy the most beautiful woman in mythology in protest against the government's destruction of Mrs. Pankhurst, the most beautiful figure in modern history." Although Charson's knife only cut Venus's hip and back, the damage she caused caused the museum to close for two weeks to restore the work, for which she was sentenced to six months in prison.
3. A painting by Rauschenberg erased de Kooning, 1953
Rauschenberg in 1966
Robert Rauschenberg was a painter, sculptor, and in a sense, he even worked as a vandal. In 1953, he began an art project that included erasing an existing work of art. He first tried it with his own paintings, but without success, and he found the results useless.
Rauschenberg, The Erased de Kooning, 1953
So he approached Willem de Kooning, a self-proclaimed Abstract Expressionist painter, in the hope that he would get a painting that could be erased. De Kooning somewhat reluctantly agreed, leaving the young artist with a painting that he considered unimportant. Rauschenberg erased it with an eraser, leaving only a few blurry marks. The final work, Erased de Kooning Drawing, is an example of what happens when the destruction of a work of art itself constitutes a work.
4. Pietà (Hammer Smashed), 1972
After the accident, restorers are restoring the Holy Death.
How many times do you have to hit with a hammer to seriously damage a Renaissance masterpiece? Michelangelo's answer to the Holy Martyrdom is 12. In a 1972 attack, Laszlo Toth, an unemployed geologist, hit the Virgin Mary on the nose and left dents in her bandana. The Vatican Museums then underwent a painstaking, 10-month restoration work, in which restorers reassembled 3 fragments of her nose and the remaining 100 fragments that flew apart during the hammering.
In the end, the piece was as good as new and exhibited behind bulletproof glass. Tóth was found by a Roman court to be socially dangerous and sent to a psychiatric hospital, released two years later and deported from Italy to Australia.
5. The Mona Lisa was painted on a tour, 1974
People gaze at Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa at the Tokyo National Museum in 1974.
In the past 110 years alone, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa has endured many acts of vandalism, such as being stolen and smashed by teacups. But the most memorable one involved a Japanese woman named Tomoko Yonezu and a can of spray paint. In 1974, the work toured from the Louvre in Paris to the Rijksmuseum in Tokyo, where Tomoko Yonezu, dissatisfied with the museum's disability policy, tried to spray red paint on the Mona Lisa, an event that caused a stir in Japan, although Yonezu Tomoko 's plan was unsuccessful. In the end, she was forced to pay a fine of 300,000 yen, and the museum set aside a day for people with disabilities to visit the world masterpiece.
6. A prominent art dealer protests against the use of Picasso's Guernica, 1974
The cover of the Daily News reported on Shavrazi's vandalism.
Tony Shafrazi is now best known as an early dealer of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat's work. But as early as 1974, he became a topic of conversation in the art world for completely different reasons. That year, he walked into the Museum of Modern Art in New York and sprayed "KILL LIES ALL" on Picasso's modernist masterpiece Guernica. The phrase refers to protests over the release of William Cali, a lieutenant convicted of involvement in massacres during the Vietnam War; Tony Shavrazi also participated in anti-war actions led by the Union of Artists. William Rubin, then director of the Museum of Modern Art, once told the media that Shavrazi was charged with criminal mischief and that the painting survived because its thick layer of varnish "acts as an invisible shield."
7. Rembrandt's "Night Watch" was chopped down by "The Man Sent by God", 1975
Rembrandt's Night Watch, destroyed in 1975.
In 1975, Rembrandt's largest work, The Night Watch (1642), was vandalized by a man wielding a bread knife. He said he was sent to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam by "God" and that God ordered him to cut the piece. Although initial security guards tried to stop him, he left several scratches on the painting. "We have to conclude that the canvas is badly damaged." PJ Van Thiel, then acting director of the museum, said. Because the work was in such good condition before it was destroyed, it took the museum's restorers only four years to restore it to its original state. But by 1990, another man had once again sabotaged Night Watch with unknown chemicals.
8. David Hammons "shines" on Richard Serra's sculpture, 1981
While Hammons was urinating at T.W.U., Serra's "inclined arc" (pictured) was being installed.
This is a rare case of an artist destroying someone else's work without first asking permission. In 1981, David Hammons visited Richard Serra's sculpture T.W.U (1980), a steel public artwork installed in New York's Tribeca district. The piece had been stained with graffiti before Hammons, but Hammons was determined to add his own mark. So when photographer Dawoud Bey took pictures, he unzipped and started urinating. The result was a photo of "a police officer standing idly by." In fact, it was a performance by Hammons, now known as "Pissed Off." Hammons also threw dozens of pairs of sneakers at the sculpture and performed a performance called "Shoe Tree."
9. Rembrandt's Danae splashed with a foul-smelling liquid, 1985
Rembrandt, Danae, 1636
In 1985, while visiting the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, a man defaced Rembrandt's painting Danae. He first slashed with a knife at the part depicting Danae's stomach. Then a rotten liquid was thrown, which at the time was thought to be sulfuric acid. Whatever the liquid, it eroded Rembrandt's painting, leaving some wondering if the painting would be destroyed forever. But after 12 years of painstaking process, the piece was miraculously completely restored and re-displayed.
10. Peeing in a Duchamp readymade urinal, 1993
In 2008, Duchamp's The Fountain was exhibited at Tate Modern.
No, you shouldn't really use The Spring (1917), Duchamp's famous readymade, made from a urinal flipped. However, in homage to Dadaist works, at least two artists made attempts to use them. One of them is the famous composer Brian Eno, who recently recounted that he did this in secret; The other was French performance artist Pierre Pinoncelli, whose approach was much more public — in 1993, when the work was on loan to Nimes, France, Pinuncelli urinated in it and then smashed it with a hammer. For this, he was imprisoned for a month and fined. But that didn't stop him from working on the work again, last at the 2006 exhibition of Dadaist works at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
11. A Canadian art student vomits at two masterpieces, 1996
In 2015, Mondrian's Red, Blue and Yellow Composition was exhibited at MoMA.
As described by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, this was initially considered an "unfortunate event." In 1996, Jubal Brown, a Canadian art student, came to MoMA and vomited blue liquid into Mondrian's abstract paintings. He did something similar a few months ago, spraying red on a painting by Raul Dufey at the Ontario Art Museum in Canada. Fortunately, neither painting was damaged. While both agencies considered legal action against him, Brown seemed proud of his protests, which he said were aimed at subverting "bourgeois" culture. He originally planned a "trilogy", with the third involving rumination of yellow into an untitled work, but the last did not materialize.
12. Malevich abstract painting spray painted with dollar signs in the Netherlands, 1997
Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam
The simplicity and detachment of Kazimir Malevich's abstract paintings will prompt you to imagine existence beyond life. But Alexander Brener, a Russian in 1997, painted a dollar sign in bright green on a gray-white background with a white cross painted by Malevich at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Dutch police said Breiner was trying to express an "artistic manifesto" through a painting worth about $8.6 million; Breiner said the vandalism was a protest aimed at highlighting "corruption and commercialism in the art world." He was jailed for several months for this act.
13. Taliban destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, 2001
The grotto where the Bamiyan Buddhas once were.
The Bamiyan Buddhas, dating back to the 6th century, are one of the most important works of art in Afghanistan. It is more than 100 feet tall, carved into the side of a cliff and at one point surrounded by murals. But in 2001, the Taliban destroyed the statues as if they had never existed. The Taliban reportedly used tools such as blasting, shovels and hammers to turn the huge statues into pieces to get rid of those "pagan gods."
14. Abstract work by a woman kissing Se Tombre, 2007
Reddie Sam
Ever loved a work of art so much that you kissed it? When Rindy Sam visited the Lambell Art Collection at the Avignon Museum of Contemporary Art in France, he was truly enthusiastic about one of Cy Twombly's paintings. Wearing lipstick, she walked over to the almost white Phaedrus (1977) and added her own red lips to the painting worth 2 million euros at the time. "It was an act of love, and when I kissed it, I didn't think about it," Sam reportedly said while facing trial. The judge asked her to pay the artist a symbolic 1 euro.
15. "Yellowism" artist destroys Rothko's work, 2012
Rothko's Black Maroon was re-exhibited at the Tate Modern in 2014 after two years of destruction.
Mark Rothko, who created a series of murals for Four Seasons, is currently in the collection of Tate Britain in London and is one of his favourite paintings. As a result, great attention was paid when artist Wlodzimierz Umaniec had his name and a slogan written on one of his works, Black and Maroon, which was exhibited at the Tate Modern in 2012. Umaniec claims to have pioneered the genre of "yellowism" and wrote in this work that "this is one of twelve yellowist works." But after two years in prison, he changed his attitude and apologized. Experts at the Tate initially thought they would leave permanent stains on Rothko's canvases, but when the restoration was completed and re-exhibited about two years later, hardly any post-destruction flaws could be found.
16. Kapoor's giant sculpture at Versailles is spray painted, 2015
Anti-Semitic graffiti on Kapoor's Dirty Corner.
When Anish Kapoor presented the magnificent steel sculpture Dirty Corner (2011-2015) at the Palace of Versailles in France, he was slammed by art critics, who likened it to a giant vagina (Kapoor said it had no sexual innuendo). The work was also attacked by vandals in the literal sense and labeled anti-Semitic. Kapoor's mother, who was Jewish, wanted to preserve the airbrush in its entirety, but the court forced Versailles to partially cover up the work in order to hide the graffiti. In response, Kapoor said that "the racists in France won" and later went so far as to claim that the sabotage was done by insiders.
17. Banksy's work was crushed after the auction fell off the gavel, 2018
Banksy, Love in the Dumpster, 2018
The elusive street artist Banksy is known for displaying unexpected art in unexpected places, but his most provocative move is to sabotage his own work. His 2006 Girl with a Balloon sold for £1.1 million ($1.4 million) at Sotheby's London in 2018. A few seconds after the hammer fell, the painting slipped out of the frame and began to shred. Whether the auction house knew about the gimmick in advance remains unclear, although the statement issued by the auction house seems to imply unexpected. "The Girl with the Balloon" now exists in a state of partial destruction and has become a completely different work, which Banksy named "Love in the Trash".
18. A magnum opus about the migrant crisis torn apart, 2018
The List by Banu Sinietoglu (2017-)
Every now and then, vandals opt for ultra-contemporary works, like they did in 2018. At the Liverpool Biennale, Turkish artist Banu Cennetoglu's work "List" about Europe's migration crisis was dramatically torn up. The piece, which lists 34,361 known people who have died since 1993 as a result of trying to move to Europe, is affixed to an outdoor wall and is 920 feet long. After the work was partially torn up, Sinietoglu continued to exhibit it in a torn version. "We decided to keep it in its current 'state' as a manifestation and reminder of violence against people," she said. ”
19. Confused Russian guard draws a pair of eyes on a painting, 2021
Anna Lepolskaya, Three People, 1932–1934.
Museum staff became spoilers of the work, which took place in 2021 at the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg, Russia. A guard used a ballpoint pen to add two eyes to a painting by modernist artist Anna Leporskaya. The museum did not report the vandalism to police until two weeks later, adding to the mystery of the case. Initially, no charges were made. But in 2022, the security guard, Aleksandr Vasiliev, was charged with vandalism and fined. When Vasilyev was interviewed, the story became more complicated. In the interview, he discussed how his service in the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya had severely affected his physical and mental health; It was also claimed that he vandalized the work at the instigation of a group of teenagers, saying: "They gave me a pen. I drew the eyes. I thought it was a painting from their childhood! ”
20. Van Gogh's sunflower is splashed with tomato soup, 2022
The protests spilled tomato soup on Van Gogh's Sunflowers
In 2022, climate protesters began a series of protests glued to iconic artworks from Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, all in an effort to push governments to act faster to avert the threat of ecological catastrophe. During the National Gallery in London, during Frieze Week, two Just Stop Oil activists poured tomato soup on Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Fortunately, with the protection of glass, the work was not damaged; In fact, climate protesters say they have specifically designed a protest that doesn't harm the work itself. But many thought Van Gogh's work might be vandalized, and a mass protest led by conservative experts followed. Other similar protests followed, including in Potsdam, Germany, where people threw mashed potatoes at a painting by Monet; In Vienna, oil was poured on Klimt's paintings.
Note: This article is compiled from ARTnews, and the editor has slightly cut it.