What Kind of People Vandalize & Destroy Art?

After some of my own artworks were vandalized, I wanted to understand what drives people to destroy art. Take Michelangelo’s Pietà: this timeless, magnificent masterpiece was struck 12 times with a hammer by an unemployed geologist struggling with severe mental illness.

Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has been attacked four times—twice in a single year—both at home and abroad. In 1956, while on loan to a museum in southern France, it was doused in acid; later that same year, a Bolivian national threw a rock at it. Although the painting was subsequently placed behind bulletproof glass, a disabled woman spray-painted the glass in 1974 at the Tokyo National Museum to protest its lack of accessibility. Then in 2009, a Russian woman, furious over being denied French citizenship, threw a ceramic mug—bought right in the museum’s gift shop—at the enclosure.

In 1996 at MoMA here in New York, a self-proclaimed artist vomited blue gelatin on Piet Mondrian’s Composition in White, Black, and Red, claiming the painting was "trite and boring" and needed color. Incidentally, this same person had previously vandalized another painting by vomiting red gelatin on it. In my opinion, no real artist would ever intentionally ruin another artist’s work—verbally, perhaps, but never physically.

Painter Alice Neel had much of her early work destroyed by a former lover in a fit of jealousy. Featured here is a later piece: her portrait of Stephen Shepard.

Rembrandt’s The Night Watch was vandalized three times in the 20th century. Restoration took four full years following the second attack. The third incident occurred in 1990 when a Dutch man threw sulfuric acid onto the canvas; fortunately, a quick-thinking guard applied a neutralizing agent, containing the damage. No motive was given for the attack, though it is believed this same vandal went on to severely damage a Picasso painting with a kitchen knife nine years later.

John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Henry James was attacked by a suffragist who hacked the canvas three times with a meat cleaver, though Sargent and a team of restorers were able to quickly repair it. James humorously wrote to a friend: “Yes, it was a nasty one, or rather a nasty three—for she got at me thrice over before the tomahawk was stayed. I naturally feel very scalped and disfigured, but you will be glad to know that I seem to be pronounced curable... given the magic of the modern mender’s art.”  

This painting, The Inner Chamber, was one of four of my own works vandalized at a show a few years back. When I went to inspect the gallery a few days before the opening, I had a gut-wrenching feeling that something was wrong—someone had drawn circles over the eyes with a magic marker. Fortunately, I ran to grab cleaning fluid and managed to restore them in time.

Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus was attacked by a suffragist in 1914 at The National Gallery in London. Using a meat cleaver to smash the protective glass, she proceeded to slash the canvas, later stating, “I didn’t like the way men visitors to the gallery gaped at it all day.” Notably, this same vandal went on to join the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s.

As the previous examples show, individual acts of art vandalism have been carried out by the deranged, the disgruntled, attention-seekers, and ideologues. Men and women alike have used knives, hammers, meat cleavers, fists, stones, spit, and corrosive acids to attack their targets—or simply scribbled over them. Mark Rothko’s Black on Maroon suffered this fate when a vandal wrote his name on the canvas alongside the phrase, "a potential piece of yellowism."

Political regimes have not spared art either. ISIS, in particular, targeted ancient cultural centers in Syria and Iraq known for centuries of diversity. Their goal: total destruction. What remains of a people when you destroy their culture?

In March 2001, the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan were dynamited and destroyed by the Taliban, whose leader declared them idols. Whatever pretext is given, it ultimately comes down to destroying art and erasing a people's culture. These monumental statues were a quintessential example of Gandhara art, representing a unique historical blend of Greek and Buddhist artistic traditions.

Then there is art vandalism driven by narrow-minded censorship and sheer human stupidity. Loincloths were painted over many of the figures in Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment. While some additions made as late as the 17th and 18th centuries were eventually removed during restoration, those applied earlier could not be safely undone.