Vandalism of art
Numerous acts of vandalism against art exhibits are known and some objects, such as Mona Lisa, Night Watch and The Little Mermaid, have been intentionally damaged several times.
A vast amount of damage consists of leaving a minor scratch, a stuck chewing gum, a pencil mark and so on, and usually escapes publicity.
[3] More visible acts of vandalism were premeditated, as the tool of destruction – a knife, paint, acid, soup, or hammer – was intentionally brought to the scene.
The term originated from the Sack of Rome in 455 by the East Germanic tribe of Vandals, which resulted in destruction of numerous artworks, and was quickly adopted across Europe.
[5] In 1974, art dealer Tony Shafrazi wrote "KILL LIES ALL" with red spray paint over the work Guernica by Pablo Picasso.
[11] On 10 March 1914, militant suffragette Mary Richardson walked into the National Gallery in London and attacked Diego Velázquez's painting Rokeby Venus with a meat cleaver.
Her action was ostensibly provoked by the arrest of fellow suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst the previous day,[12] although there had been earlier warnings of a planned attack on the collection.
[16] In September 1969, unidentified persons left long scratches in five paintings at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, with most damage inflicted to the Holy Family by Lorenzo Costa.
A few days earlier, a 27-year-old Italian man slashed the painting The Adoration of the Golden Calf by Nicolas Poussin at the National Gallery in London.
[18] In 1986, a man "wishing to take revenge on abstract art" cut with a knife the painting Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III by Barnett Newman.
[21] On 14 September 1991, a "deranged" man attacked the statue David by Michelangelo with a hammer he had concealed under his jacket,[22] damaging the toes of the left foot before being restrained.
A 37-year-old drunken man grabbed a metal stand and repeatedly hit the painting, shattering its protection glass, seriously damaging the original wooden frame, and tearing the central part of the canvas.
[40][41] In 1998, the painting Bathtub by Andy Warhol, estimated to be worth several hundred thousand dollars, was kissed by a vandal during a party at the museum.
[42] On 19 July 2007, police arrested artist Rindy Sam after she kissed the all-white canvas of Phaedrus by Cy Twombly, leaving a red lipstick mark.
[citation needed] In July 1987, a man named Robert Cambridge entered the National Gallery in London with a sawed-off shotgun concealed under his coat.
Cambridge told the police that he wanted to express his disgust with "political, social and economic conditions in Britain"; he was placed in a mental institution.
[47] In 1996, Canadian multi-media artist Jubal Brown vandalised Raoul Dufy's Harbor at le Havre in the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and Piet Mondrian's Composition With Red and Blue in the Museum of Modern Art in New York by deliberately vomiting food of the colors red and blue, respectively, on them.
[48] In January 1998, vandals poked holes in two paintings by Henri Matisse, Pianist with Checkers Players (1924) and The Japanese Woman (1901), exhibited in the Capitoline Museums.
[49] In January 2004, the Israeli ambassador to Sweden Zvi Mazel tried to destroy the artwork Snow White and The Madness of Truth by unplugging lights and throwing one of them into a pool causing a short circuit.
[50] On 24 February 2006, a 12-year-old boy stuck chewing gum to $1.5 million abstract painting The Bay by Helen Frankenthaler, displayed at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
[52] In 2007, the painting The Triumph of David by Ottavio Vannini (1640), exhibited at the Milwaukee Art Museum, was attacked by a 21-year-old man with a history of mental illness.
[53] In 2007, vandals broke into the Orsay Museum in Paris in the early morning, set off the alarm and damaged the painting Bridge at Argenteuil by Claude Monet.
[54] In 2012, a 49-year-old man named Andrew Shannon punched a large hole in Claude Monet's Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat, valued at €10 million, while it was being displayed at the National Gallery of Ireland.
[60] On 2 August 2009, a Russian woman, distraught over being denied French citizenship, threw a terracotta mug or teacup, purchased at the museum, at the painting in the Louvre; the vessel shattered against the glass enclosure.
In 2022, a French man disguised as an elderly woman in a wheelchair threw a cake at the glass enclosure before declaring a statement against climate change.
[63] On 28 January 2024, two attackers from the environmentalist group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Retaliation) threw soup at the painting's protective glass to protest the contemporary state of agriculture.
[65][66] In 1975, William de Rijk, an unemployed school teacher, cut dozens of zigzag lines in the painting with a knife before he was wrestled by the guards.
[70] On 6 January 1998, the statue was decapitated again;[71][72] the culprits were never found, but the head was returned anonymously to a nearby TV station, and re-attached on 4 February.
This was done in protest of the fact that, despite the Hong Kong Government promising to preserve Tsang's works, the Highways Department had painted over one of them earlier that year.
[78][79] In 2022, two Just Stop Oil activists threw tomato soup onto the painting Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh at the National Gallery in London.
