A Rothko mural at the Tate Modern in London was vandalized on Sunday afternoon when a visitor applied what museum officials described as “a small area of black paint with a brush to the painting.'' A photograph posted by a visitor, Tim Wright, on Twitter also shows the name Vladimir scrawled on the painting along with the phrase “a potential piece of yellowism.''
Yellowism is an artistic movement led by Vladimir Umanets and Marcin Lodyga. Mr. Umanets told the BBC that he is responsible for defacing the painting, saying, “I am not a vandal. I haven't done criminal damage.'' Comparing himself to Marcel Duchamp he added, “Art allows us to take what someone's done and put a new message on it.''
The 1958 mural, “Black on Maroon,'' is one of a series of paintings 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. Instead he ended up giving nine of them to the Tate. The conservator Julia Nagle told BBC's Radio 4 program on Monday that she has “every faith†that the painting can be restored.
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