Historical paintings are tough to understand, at the best of times. For the majority of us, they leave us feeling puzzled as to why they have such exorbitant price tags. But the experts tell us that they are revolutionary and irreplaceable works of art. As such, the casual viewer usually keeps their distance from any such painting.
However, that was not the case for a security guard in Russia. In fact, it took him just one day of being on the job to disregard such feelings. The job was too boring for the guard. So he doodled on a painting worth approximately one million US dollars.
A Costly Illegal Modification To The Painting
Now, in fiction, this would make for a hilarious sequence of events. Do you remember Mr. Bean accidentally defacing Whistler’s Mother, in Bean? Unfortunately, though, in real life, there are serious consequences to such an action.
The painting in question is Anna Leporskaya’s Three Figures. It is an avant-garde piece of art that was painted during the early 1930s.[1] The painting shows three figures which look like humans. However, they have no facial features. It creates an eerie and haunting look.
However, this security guard could not let the facial features remain absent. So he took a simple ballpoint pen and drew two circular shapes on two of the three figures. The circles were probably meant to be eyes.
He had just started working at Yekaterinburg’s Boris Yeltsin Presidential Centre that day. Anna Reshetkin, the curator of the exhibition, could only call it “a lapse of sanity” on the part of the security guard.
Two visitors were the first to notice the additions. They were visiting the “The World as Non-objectivity: The Birth of a New Art” exhibition in December. Upon noticing the “improvements”, they told the staff about it on December 20th, 2021. Art Newspaper Russia was the first one to cover the story.
However, it took till 8th February of this year, to discover who the culprit was.
Read: Law student, 19, uses textbooks to win a court case against a landlord
The Fate Of The ‘Painter’
Alexander Drozdov, the executive director of the Yeltsin Center, stated that a private security organization employed the security guard. He has since been fired.[2]
Ironically, the ballpoint pen was a Yeltsin center special one as well. Fortunately, there was not much pressure behind the doodle. So the damage was not too deep. However, the layer of paint on the face on the left side had slightly crumbled.
The Art Newspaper claimed that prosecutors had, at first, refused to initiate criminal proceedings. They believed the damage was too ‘insignificant’. However, the Culture Minister later complained personally. As such, the police started investigating the matter last week. The security guard, if proven to be guilty, may have to pay a fine and face a jail time of a maximum of 3 months.
Read: Man ‘Walking Awkwardly Through Airport’ Had Seven Gold Bars Hidden Up His Bum
The painting has been sent back to Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery, the original owner of the painting. According to Sky News, the restoration will probably cost a hefty 250,000 roubles ($3,345). The Yeltsin gallery has also installed protective screens in front of the other paintings, just in case.
We are glad to know the damage is not too significant and that the guard does not have to face some extreme punishment. Needless to say, though, defacing a million-dollar painting would usually carry much worse punishments. So, even if this incident turned out to be hilarious, please admire the paintings as they are meant to – from a distance!
Keep Reading: People Keep Getting QR Codes Tattooed on Their Body