Art destruction has emerged as a unique form of vandalism with significant cultural impact, as attacks on artistic works automatically generate scandal due to art's special status in society. In recent years, climate activists have particularly drawn attention through their targeted attacks on famous artworks, with the most recent incident occurring in June when protesters doused Pablo Picasso's "L'Hétaire" with pink paint at a Montreal museum.
However, like almost all such protest actions, the painting was protected by glass, preventing any real damage to the artwork. These contemporary art destroyers operate in what experts call "simulation mode" - they seek to harness the symbolic value of destruction without actually causing it. The statement from the Picasso attacker reflected this approach, declaring: "Today I neither attacked nor destroyed art. I protect it. Art is fundamentally a representation of life. It is created by the living for the living. On a dead planet, there is no art."
By appealing to art's high symbolic value in their protests, climate activists actually reproduce and confirm art's special status in society. Since media attention only comes from attacking famous paintings, they also confirm - quite conservatively - the status of canonical artistic geniuses. This represents what could be called a perverted form of respect, one that was evident in the latest Picasso attacker's statement about conservation, not just of the planet, but also of art that cannot exist without a planet.
A completely different and far less respectful form of art destruction has also begun to proliferate in recent years. This type of destruction is motivated by the trend of technically reproducing artworks for private use and inserting oneself into these reproductions - essentially, the hope for a beautiful photo. Last summer, media outlets reported on a museum visitor in Verona who sat on the so-called "Van Gogh Chair" by artist Nicola Bolla, wanting his wife to photograph him on the glittering seat.
The artist had recreated the chair as a homage to van Gogh's "Vincent's Chair with Pipe," constructing it as a fragile foil covered entirely with Swarovski crystals. Despite clear warning signs indicating it was not meant for sitting, the visitor attempted to pose on the sparkling chair. Due to the man's lack of balance, the incident ended in catastrophe - the chair broke under him, as captured by surveillance cameras, and he and his accomplice panicked and fled the scene.
The museum launched the incident in a video on social media, clearly designed to go viral with effective staging and a horror film-like soundtrack. The accompanying stern text read: "We want this episode to encourage reflection and raise public awareness. Art must be admired and experienced, but above all respected." This reinforced the special status of the aesthetic as something that demands respect, regardless of the artwork's quality.
This respect can apparently be demanded independent of an artwork's quality. One could argue that the damaged chair appeared kitschy and pandering, and there's a certain irony that a work so transparently referencing art's special status - van Gogh's simple wooden chair transformed into a sparkling Swarovski crystal creation - became victim to a clumsy posterior. However, this quality question is irrelevant to evaluating the case, as art appears in the face of destruction as a phenomenon defined by the location where it occurs and the attitude that location demands: respect.
This attitude is increasingly lacking among museum visitors today when it comes to satisfying their need for amusing photos to send as trophies to social media. Much attention was drawn in June to a Uffizi Gallery visitor who leaned against a painting by Anton Domenico Gabbiani while attempting to take a selfie, damaging it in the process. Earlier in spring, reports emerged of a child in a Rotterdam museum damaging Mark Rothko's "Gray, Orange on Maroon, No. 8," a painting valued at fifty million euros.
This raises the question: Do these stories of disrespectful art destruction indicate a new misbehavior among museum visitors, a new lack of understanding for art's value? One could argue against this, as unruly behavior belongs to the founding myths of modern aesthetics, serving as a contrasting backdrop to appropriate behavior toward art that modern audiences have repeatedly needed to be educated about.
Lawrence Levine, in his book "Highbrow/Lowbrow" (1990) about the rise of aesthetic hierarchies, describes how museum visitors had to be prevented from behaving impossibly in art's presence throughout modernity. He quotes Louis di Cesnola, the first director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who spoke positively in the late 19th century about educational effects achieved through admonition and exclusion.
Di Cesnola noted: "One no longer sees people in picture galleries picking their noses with their fingers; no more dogs brought openly or hidden in baskets into the museum. No more tobacco is spit on the gallery floor, to the disgust of all other visitors. There are no more nannies bringing children to a corner to soil the museum floor. No one comes anymore with cameras to take snapshots of objects and visitors. There is no more whistling, singing, or loud calling from one gallery to another."
The idea that there was once a time when people let children urinate in museums and spat tobacco on floors seems unimaginable today. However, other behavioral errors listed here seem familiar, particularly the problem of snapshots that existed over a hundred years ago - though today it has reached entirely new dimensions through the combination of mass tourism, smartphones, and social media.
The practice history of modern aesthetics is a history of discipline, repeatedly challenged by carnivalesque misbehavior. The fascination with such misbehavior also expresses unease with aesthetic authority and a certain malicious joy over damaged, soiled, or destroyed art. The attractiveness of such anecdotes is evident in how stories of comical art destruction can fill gift books.
In "That Was Art. Now It's Gone," Cora Wucherer collects, as the subtitle promises, failed restorations and other curious art accidents. This includes the famous story of Joseph Beuys' bathtub decorated with gauze bandages, plasters, and fat, which was scrubbed clean by two women in 1973 while preparing for a Social Democratic Party celebration, wanting to wash glasses in it. It also includes cases where art was simply mistaken for trash - such as a sculpture by Michael Beutler made of yellow concrete shell material that was simply cleared away in 2005 as improperly disposed bulk waste.
Such cases satisfy a certain populist, anti-authoritarian desire: modern art as pretentious fraud swept away by robust everyday people. Simultaneously, the attention these stories receive confirms how great the authority of the art concept remains. Where art breaks through ignorance or carelessness, where visitors stumble or disrespectfully handle works, the fault lines of this art concept become clear.
The most famous case of the last twenty years is certainly the failed restoration of a Jesus fresco that an 81-year-old woman undertook in 2012 in a small Spanish church, completely disfiguring the image in the process. Instead of a Jesus with crown of thorns, Wucherer notes mockingly, a little monkey now adorned the church wall - a "Monchichi." Indeed, the fresco had something ape-like after the brutal redesign, though with its gaping mouth and blurred contours, it also recalled Edvard Munch's modernist masterpiece "The Scream."
What makes this case interesting beyond pure malicious joy at aesthetic failure is that "Ecce Monchichi" became a viral success, shared endlessly on the internet and turning the church into a pilgrimage site for curious visitors. The malicious joy in this case affects not only the restorer's incompetence but also art's special status itself, which is simultaneously deconstructed and confirmed in a peculiar way. People delight in the disrespect with which an elderly lady simply picked up a brush to touch up the faded fresco, but also in the punished hubris of the would-be artist. At the same time, the spectacular failure produced a more significant aesthetic experience than mediocre competence would have: an previously unnoticed fresco became an aesthetic sensation.
