Picasso’s The Actor
Image: Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
After a woman deemed a “clumsy art lover” lost her balance this week and fell into a Picasso painting at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, it left a six-inch tear and cut the work’s $130 million value in half. The unidentified woman was taking an adult education class at the time of her costly stumble, and curators at the Met are now working to restore it before a major Picasso show in April.


Marcel Duchamp’s The Large Glass
Image: ARS, New York / ADAGP, Paris / Estate of Marcel Duchamp / Courtesy of The Philadelphia Museum of Art
The godfather of Dada, Marcel Duchamp, took it in stride when one of his masterpieces The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even was cracked while being transported from Brooklyn to Connecticut in the 1930s. Known as The Large Glass, the work was permanently cracked, but Duchamp, who believed in letting chance play a role in his art, decided he loved the accident. “The more I look at it the more I like the cracks: They are not like shattered glass,” he said. “They have a shape. There is a symmetry in the cracking, the two crackings are symmetrically arranged and there is more, almost an intention there, an extra—a curious intention that I am not responsible for, a ready-made intention, in other words, that I respect and love."


Michelangelo’s Pietà
During a move in the 18th century, four fingers of Michelangelo’s immortal Pietà were broken off the Virgin Mary. They were restored in 1736, 230 years after the artist carved it from a single slab of marble, and art historians are still debating whether the restorer took a few liberties with Mary’s hand gesture. Then in 1972, a Hungarian-born geologist named Laszlo Toth battered the sculpture with a hammer, screaming, “I am Jesus Christ risen from the dead.” Mary’s nose, eyelid, and forearm were casualties. Toth was locked away in a mental hospital for two years. The sculpture now sits behind bulletproof glass.


Craig Kauffman’s "Untitled Wall Relief"and Peter Alexander’s "Untitled"
Image: Jacques Brinon / AP Photo
The Pompidou Center in Paris has had bad luck with art accidents. Two artworks were ruined in 2006 when they tumbled off the museum walls and another was damaged during an exhibition about Los Angeles artists. One of the works, an untitled wall relief from 1967 made of acrylic lacquer on Plexiglas by Craig Kauffman, broke two days before the four-month show ended. The other, an untitled wall sculpture in cast resin by Peter Alexander from 1971, fell off the wall in the middle of the night right before the show opened. A third work, an untitled 1960’s painting by Robert Irwin, suffered minor damage. The painting, which initially hung in a hallway at the Pompidou, where there was heavy visitor traffic, somehow got a mysterious mark on it. A conservator was later able to restore the work.


Cy Twombly Painting
Image: SIPA (2)
A museum curator in Avignon accused a French woman of “raping” a $2 million artwork by artist Cy Twombly after she planted a lipstick-red smooch on the otherwise immaculate white canvas. Rindy Sam, 30, herself an artist, explained that she was overcome by the power of the work. “I found the painting even more beautiful afterward,” she said. Twombly on the other hand, was reportedly “devastated” by the incident. “This is vandalism, a rape, she has no idea what she has done," said Eric Mezil, who curated the exhibition of Twombly’s works in Avignon.” Mezil said there was “very little chance” of restoring the painting. “Red is the most violent color,” he said. “This red is indelible.”


Two Lucian Freud Paintings
Image: Getty Images
In 2000, a Lucian Freud plant study that had come up for auction was accidentally destroyed by workers at Sotheby’s who mistook the crated work (valued at £100,000) for trash and had it crushed. A Sotheby's spokesman admitted, "it's an extremely unfortunate situation and we have taken ... steps to prevent it happening again." But that wasn’t the only Freud destroyed. Eight years later, an academic was hunting down work painted by Freud between 1940 and 1958 when she discovered one of them had been trashed—intentionally. The New York rare book dealer Bernard Breslauer, who died in 2004, destroyed Freud’s unflattering portrait of him and his double chin. The professor said that upon hearing the news, Freud “was very disappointed and frustrated, as any artist would be. He doesn't mind his work going hand-to-hand and being sold. But like any artist, he wants his pictures to be kept and not destroyed."


Three Qing Vases
Image: Newscom (2)
Nick Flynn tripped over a shoelace and fell down the stairs of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in 2006, crashing into three Chinese porcelain vases from the 17th century. He swore it was an accident, but was arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage. After it happened, Flynn said, “I can say with my hand on my heart that it was not deliberate. I don’t think a movie stuntman would have been able to tumble downstairs, destroy the vases and come out unscathed.” Valued at £500,000, the vases had been on display on the stairs for 50 years, and an estimated 9 million visitors had walked by without incident. They were shattered into 400 pieces—from big chunks to tiny shards—and the mess alone took three days to


Picasso’s Le Rêve
Image: Reuters
In 2006, days after making a $139 million sale for Picasso’s Le Rêve painting (which he bought for $48.4 million), Las Vegas hotel mogul Steve Wynn, accidentally put his elbow through the piece while showing it off to friends. Wynn, a renowned collector who suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease that has left him partially blind, was in the process of explaining the provenance of the portrait – a painting of Picasso’s mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, when he accidentally raised an arm and crashed it through the canvas. Nora Ephron, who witnessed the moment, described the aftermath saying, “Wynn stepped away from the painting, and there, smack in the middle of Marie-Thérèse Walter’s plump and allegedly erotic forearm, was a black hole the size of a silver dollar—or, to be more exactly, the size of the tip of Steve Wynn's elbow —with two three-inch long rips coming off it in either direction." Luckily for Wynn, the lost value wasn’t an issue. “The money means nothing to me. It's that I had this painting in my care and I've damaged it,” he said. His wife, however, was more optimistic, and said it was a sign they should keep the 1932 oil painting.


Damien Hirst’s Ashtray Art
Image: Joel Ryan / AP Photo
When a cleaner arrived at the Eyestorm Gallery the morning after a Damien Hirst opening, he found huge piles of what he thought was trash—empty beer bottles, newspapers, full ashtrays and half-full coffee cups. So he gathered it up into bags to throw away. Unfortunately, the cleaner was only half right—Hirst had arranged the elements into an impromptu art installation at the party. Staff were immediately dispatched to retrieve the trash and put the piles back where they were based on party photos. "I didn't think for a second that it was a work of art—it didn't look much like art to me,” the cleaning man said. “So I cleared it all into binbags and dumped it." At least one art critic approved: "The cleaner obviously ought to be promoted to an art critic of a national newspaper. He clearly has a fine critical eye and can spot rubbish, just as the child could see that the emperor wasn't wearing any new clothes.”


Elvis’ Steiff Teddy Bear
Image: Wookey Hole Caves / AP Photo; inset: Landov
While on duty protecting a rare collection of teddy bears at a children's museum in 2006, a guard dog inexplicably snapped and went on a wild rampage through the exhibit (valued at $900,000), ripping the head off a brown stuffed bear once owned by Elvis Presley. Barney, a six-year-old Doberman pinscher, left a trail of furry limbs and fluffy stuffing in his wake. “He just went berserk," said the general manager of Wookey Hall Caves in western England. The now-headless Elvis bear, made in 1909 and named Mabel, was valued at $75,000. "I've spoken to the bear's owner and he is not very pleased at all," the manager said. A human security guard had to chase Barney for several minutes before he was able to wrestle the four-legged offender to the ground.

11. 이외에도 이런 예는 많습니다만

에르미타주의 렘브란트 작 다나에 같은 경우도 그렇지요.

Danaë is Rembrandt's painting from the collection of Pierre Crozat which from the 18th century resides in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. It depicts the character Danaë from Greek mythology, the mother of Perseus. She is presumably depicted as welcoming Zeus, who impregnated her in the form of a shower of gold. Given that this is one of Rembrandt's most magnificent paintings, it is not out of the question that he cherished it, but it also may have been difficult to sell because of its eight-by-ten-foot size.[1] Although the artist's wife Saskia was the original model for Danaë, Rembrandt later changed the figure's face to that of his mistress Geertje Dircx.

Vandalism

On June 15, 1985 Rembrandt's painting was attacked by a man later judged insane; he threw sulfuric acid on the canvas and cut it twice with his knife. The entire central part of the composition was turned into a mixture of spots with a conglomerate of splashes and areas of dripping paint.

The process of restoring the painting began the same day. Following consultations with chemists, art restorers began washing the surface of the painting with water; they kept the painting in the vertical position, and blew mouthfuls of water at the painting to prevent further degradation of the painting.

The restoration of the painting was accomplished between 1985 and 1997 by staff of the State Hermitage's Laboratory of Expert Restoration of Easel Paintings: Ye.N. Gerasimov (group leader), A.G. Rakhman, and G.A. Shirokov, with the participation of T.P. Alioshina in matters of scientific methodology.

이외에 이런 사례도 있지요


Graffiti is a common form of vandalism


A bust of Germanicus Caesar. Note the cross incised on the statue's forehead and the broken off nose.[5]

Though vandalism in itself is illegal, it is often also an integral part of modern popular culture. French painter Gustave Courbet's attempt to disassemble the Vendôme column during the 1871 Paris Commune was probably one of the first artistic vandalist acts, celebrated at least since Dada performances during World War I. The Vendôme column was considered a symbol of the recently-deposed Second Empire of Napoleon III, and dismantled as such.

After the burning of the Tuileries Palace on May 23, 1871, Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche himself meditated about the "fight against culture", wondering what could justify culture if it were to be destroyed in such a "senseless" manner (the arguments are: culture is justified by works of art and scientific achievements; exploitation is necessary to those achievements, leading to the creation of exploited people who then fight against culture. In this case, culture can't be legitimised by art achievements, and Nietzsche writes: "I {also} know what it means: fighting against culture". After quoting him, Klossowski writes: "The criminal fight against culture is only the reverse side of a criminal culture"

As destruction of monument, vandalism can only have sense in a culture respecting history, archeology - Nietzsche spoke of monumental history. As destruction of monumental history, vandalism was assured a long life (as Herostratus proved): Performance art could make such a claim, as well as Hakim Bey's poetic terrorism or Destroy 2000 Years of Culture from Atari Teenage Riot. Gustave Courbet's declaration stated:

"Attendu que la colonne Vendôme est un monument dénué de toute valeur artistique, tendant à perpétuer par son expression les idées de guerre et de conquête qui étaient dans la dynastie impériale, mais que réprouve le sentiment d’une nation républicaine, [le citoyen Courbet] émet le vœu que le gouvernement de la Défense nationale veuille bien l’autoriser à déboulonner cette colonne."[6]

("As the Vendôme column is formally considered a monument devoid of any artistic value, tending to perpetuate with its expression ideas of war and conquest of the past imperial dynasty, that are reprobated by a republican nation's sentiment, citizen Courbet is to emit his wish that the National Defense government will allow him to dismantle this column.")

Hence, painter Courbet justified the dismantlement of the Vendôme column on political grounds, downgrading its artistic value. Vandalism poses the problem of the value of art compared to life's hardships: Courbet thought that the political values transmitted by this work of art neutralized its artistic value. Anyway, his project wasn't followed, however, on April 12, 1871, the dismantlement of the imperial symbol was voted by the Commune, and the column taken down on May 8. After the assault on the Paris Commune by Adolphe Thiers, Gustave Courbet was condemned to pay part of the expenses.

In 1974, Norman Mailer glorified the art of vandalism in Faith of Graffiti, which likened tagging in New York City to the work of Giotto and Rauschenberg. New York Authoritys responded by coating subway walls with Teflon paint, jailing taggers and requiring hardware stores to keep spray paint inventories under lock and key.[7]

Tags, designs, and styles of writing are commonplace on clothing and are an influence on many of the corporate logos with which we are familiar. Many skateparks and similar youth-oriented venues are decorated with commissioned graffiti-style artwork, and in many others patrons are welcome to leave their own. There is still, however, a very fine line between vandalism as an artform, as a political statement, and as a crime. An excellent example of one who walks this threefold line is Bristol born guerrilla-artist Banksy, who is revered as a cult artistic figure by many, but seen by others as a criminal.