Title: The Many Deaths of a Painting - 99% Invisible
Headings: The Many Deaths of a Painting
Episode 347
The Many Deaths of a Painting
Stedelijk Art Museum Photo by Editør (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue III by Barnett Newman
Anybody Can Do That
At the time people would write really long and elaborate letters to say how much they hated this painting
The Murder of Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue III
The Rules of Restoration
Murdered! Again!
Return of the Art Killer
A History of Art Vandalism

Content: Van Bladeren found another piece by Newman, a large blue painting with a white zip down the middle titled Cathedra and attacked this piece with a box cutter. When he was done, he threw a packet of pamphlets on the floor that contained rambling, incoherent writing. At his second trial, van Bladeren was declared mentally unfit and sent to a psychiatric institution. A History of Art Vandalism
These particular attacks were motivated by mental illness, but they’re also part of a long, sad history of art vandalism. Picasso’s Guernica was spray painted in the 70s; acid has been thrown at Rembrandt’s artwork; and two Michelangelo sculptures have been attacked with hammers. Newman’s work, in particular, has been vandalized several times for anti-semitic reasons. Newman was a Jewish artist and Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue IV (which was the sequel to Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue III) was struck and spat upon in Germany, because the attacker said it bore a mocking resemblance to the German flag. A Newman sculpture at a museum in Houston was spray-painted with swastikas in 1979 and just last year, someone poured white paint into the reflecting pool surrounding this same sculpture and left behind white supremacist leaflets.