Mishap
Chocolate, Politics, and a Rothko
One act of vandalism inspires another
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Image: Unsplash
Incident ReportCOA / MISHAPS
Accidental Damage Rating
- Repair Cost
- Extensive conservation
- Curator's Blood Pressure
- 90%
- Embarrassment Level
- 6/10
- Recovered?
- Restored
- Selfie Involved?
- No
Days after Vladimir Umanets defaced a Rothko at Tate Modern, performance artist Jubilee Brown scrawled his name across another Rothko, 'Black on Maroon', using paint mixed with chocolate.
In 2012 Brown entered Tate Modern carrying black paint blended with chocolate and wrote 'Vladimir Umanets '12' across the monumental canvas. The gesture was not random: it responded directly to Umanets, who had days earlier vandalised another Rothko by writing on it.
Brown argued she was reclaiming the conversation around authorship and protest. The irony was lost on no one: one act of vandalism had inspired a second, each artist writing over Rothko to make a point about who gets to write over art.