[NEWS]The student who punched a Picasso painting at Tate Modern was sentenced to 18 months in prison

September 18 2020



Pablo Picasso, Bust of a Woman, 1944, on view at Tate Modern. Photo by jpellgen, via Flickr.


Busting a masterpiece. Can this be considered as a performance? 


The student who intentionally damaged Picasso's Bust Of A Woman,1944, at the Tate Modern last December. The student, Shakeel Ryan Massey, a 20-year-old Spanish architecture student,has been sentenced to 18 months in prison. He had wrapped his hands in padlocks and scarves during his visit to the museum. This evidence proves that he had intention to 'bust' through the glass that protected the masterpiece. This masterpiece costs $26.3-million. As he threw the painting to the ground, Massey told nearby security guards that he was carrying out a piece of performance art.According to Art Forum The portrait, which depicts Dora Maar; who was Picasso’s muse. The work is currently going through an extensive 18 month restoration. In order to preserve his signature Cubist in. It still remains unclear what effect the damage will have on the work’s value in the long term.


The Tate Modern was previously the site of defacement in the name of performance art in 2012, when Polish artist Włodzimierz Umaniec—who goes by Vladimir Umanets and is a proponent of an art movement he’s dubbed the forever extending Yellowism - inscribed a number of words, including his name, in ink on the corner of Mark Rothko's Black on Maroon (1958). He later compared his act to works by Marcel Duchamp. Umaniec was sentenced to two years in prison following the incident.


Judge Jeremy Donne QC told Massey in his sentencing, as quoted by Evening Standard:


It is difficult to conclude anything other than this offence was committed for the purpose of notoriety. Apart from the fact you are just 20, I have no evidence before me that you were particularly naïve or particularly immature. There is nothing to suggest you were anything other than a 20-year-old seeking fame.


 


 

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