Vandalising Art

Last week a man strolled into the Tate Modern Gallery in London and wrote a message (including his name) on a Mark Rothko painting. Vladamir Umanets is now waiting to be arrested, but in the meantime has contacted the BBC to explain his actions. He claims to be the founder of a new art movement which he calls 'yellowism'. He says he was making an artistic statement, and (comparing himself to Marcel Duchamp) that "Art allows us to take what someone's done and put a new message on it."

A BBC article that I read related to this story shows that it is not unusual for great works of art to be targeted by people usually intent on making either artistic or political statements. One of the most famous instances (although by no means the first) occurred at the Tate Gallery in 2000 when two performance artists, Yuan Chai and Jian Jun Xi, jumped onto Tracey Emin's Bed in their underpants and began a pillow fight, to applause from onlookers, before being removed by the gallery's security guards. They called their work Two Naked Men Jump Into Tracey's Bed.
Vandalism of Art