A man has admitted to defacing a Rothko mural at the Tate Modern in London by scrawling graffiti on it with black paint, the BBC reported on Wednesday.
On Oct. 7, Wlodzimierz Umaniec, 26, scrawled the phrase “a potential piece of yellowism'' on the painting. That day he told the BBC that he was responsible for the act, but claimed that he was “not a vandal,'' saying, “I haven't done criminal damage.''
But on Wednesday he pleaded guilty at Camberwell Green Magistrates' Court in South London to causing criminal damage to property valued at over £5,000, or about $8,000. (The actual value of the painting is in the tens of millions of dollars.)
Mr. Umaniec was released on bail and will be sentenced at Inner London Crown Court at a later date. His bail conditions stipulate that he must not go to the Tate Modern and that he will report to his local police station three times a week.
Mr. Umaniec, who also goes by the name Vladimir Umanets, has s aid that he is one of the founders of “Yellowism,'' a movement he describes as “neither art, nor anti-art.''
Conservators at the Tate are hoping that the1958 mural, “Black on Maroon,'' can be cleaned and restored. The painting is one of a series originally commissioned for the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building in New York. But Rothko, appalled by the restaurant's clientele, changed his mind and refused to deliver the paintings. He instead ended up giving nine of them to the Tate.
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