After a man claims to have increased the value of a Rothko by signing it, we suggest five other pieces that could be polished
A man who defaced a work by Mark Rothko at Tate Modern in London on Sunday has claimed that by doing so he has improved the value of the painting.
Vladimir Umanets (or the person identifying himself as Umanets) claimed that he had acted in the spirit of Marcel Duchamp, who in 1917 signed a urinal "R.Mutt", gave it a title – Fountain – and submitted it for exhibition under the auspices of the American Society of Independent Artists. It was rejected – but with Fountain, Duchamp pretty much invented conceptual art.
In the satirical or conceptual spirit of Duchamp, then – it being rather less advisable to act in the more demonstrative spirit of Mr Umanets, given Scotland Yard's efforts to find him – here are five more art works that could be improved … and how to improve them.
1. Tracey Emin: My Bed (1998)
Emin, famously, made the Turner Prize shortlist with her unmade bed, which was strewn with the detritus of an unhappy life – including, as the Saatchi Gallery website says:
… empty booze bottles, fag butts, stained sheets, worn panties: the bloody aftermath of a nervous breakdown.
The piece attracted protests, inevitably: two Chinese artists stripped to the waist and bounced about on the bed for 15 minutes, indulging in a pillow fight while they were at it.
Clearly the best way to improve Emin's unmade bed would be simply to steal into its gallery in the middle of the night and make it – crisp counterpane, fluffed pillows, a bit of a vacuum of the carpet. All of which would obviously be a devastating comment about Emin's professed support for the Conservative party.
2. Martin Creed: Work No 227, The Lights Going On And Off (2000)
Creed's Turner Prize winner offers a bare gallery that is illuminated, and then not, by a light that switches itself on and off every five seconds.
According to MoMA:
This piece is based on a cycle of repetitive contradictions: each five-second phase is denied by the next.
Which is all well and good. It is incumbent upon this writer, however, to suggest simply switching the light off, thereby setting a fine example in the fight to conserve energy and slow down global warming, the melting of the icecaps and other looming nasties otherwise encouraged by such wanton profligacy. That, or just make sure he's using a low-energy bulb.
3. Lucio Fontana, Spacial Concept Waiting (1960)
Lest one be accused of willful philistinism – the best kind, admittedly – it is necessary next to a) proffer approval of Jake and Dinos Chapman's habit of improving or "rectifying" prints of works by Goya (not original pieces) and making interesting points about art and war and vandalism and so on, all by the addition of clown faces and b) suggest a similar improvement to works by Lucio Fontana, the founder of Spatialism.
Fontana's Tagli ("Cuts") are canvases of various colours cut, jabbed and slashed in various ways to produce unsettling and thought-provoking effects. But even given the provocation of some prime art-historical gibberish – the cuts are, Tate tells us, "emblematic of his gestural aesthetic" – to suggest simply improving Fontana's work with a needle and thread would be lazy.
Instead, one might consider some Chapman-esque work – a baleful pair of eyes and a horn or two, perhaps borrowed from Hieronymus Bosch's more apocalyptic stuff or Bartolomé Bermejo's little Satan and added to the canvas with appropriate care, might make Fontana's cuts more unsettling still.
Fontana, by the way, was of the opinion that:
My discovery was the hole and that's it. I am happy to go to the grave after such a discovery.
Which seems fair enough.
4. Raphael, The Madonna of the Pinks (1506-07)
Some artworks could be improved simply by being found – Leonardo Da Vinci's long-lost Battle of Anghiari fresco, for an example well documented here. Others might be improved simply by not being found out.
This tiny Raphael hangs in the National Gallery in London and is undeniably exquisite and thus unimprovable. Its inclusion here is due to a 2004 appeal that raised £22m, including £11.5m of lottery money, in order to persuade the Duke of Northumberland not to sell it to the Getty museum in Los Angeles.
Intriguingly, the National Gallery's website says that "for more than a century it was thought to be only a copy".
I don't doubt the scholarship that went into the realisation that The Madonna of the Pinks was a genuine Raphael. But attribution, particularly regarding old-master paintings, is a curious business (there are plenty of rather contentious Rembrandts) and about as difficult as it should be to justify paying vast sums public money to an aristocrat in order to "save for the nation" a painting, however marvelous, that most of the nation will never see. Or want to.
Some paintings might be improved by not being proved to be great paintings and thus not being "saved for the nation".
5. Anish Kapoor, ArcelorMittal Orbit (2012)
And finally: Kapoor's enormous public sculpture in the London Olympic park has attracted its fair share of criticism, conversation and controversy and I don't propose to add to all that here by suggesting improvement by demolition.
Rather, the thing just has to be made into a helter-skelter, hasn't it?
Art
Tate Modern
Mark Rothko
Tracey Emin
Martin Creed
Jake and Dinos Chapman
Raphael
Anish Kapoor
Martin Pengelly
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