By V Riczker
Edited by Elim Chan and Alloe Mak

Author’s note: This essay is heavily inspired and influenced by Jacob Geller’s 2019 video essay “Who’s Afraid Of Modern Art: Vandalism, Video Games, and Fascism.” Jacob Geller is a video essay creator on YouTube. His content primarily discusses video games, but he integrates his essays with “history, politics, empathy, and more.” In the aforementioned video, he discusses the connection between censorship of modern art and fascism, as well as cultural ideas of and reactions to the movement. His video is linked below. I recommend you check it out if you’re interested in learning more about this topic, or just in the mood for a well-crafted essay.

PART ONE: WHO’S AFRAID?

You’ve heard it before. In conversation. In criticism. On every social media platform known to man. I could do that. I could paint that blue canvas. I could set up a fan in a glass box. I could duct-tape a banana to a wall. I could do modern art. It’s not that hard, right?

In 1986, Gerard Jan van Bladeren walked into Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum and took a knife to an 18-foot painting.  The surface area of the gashes totaled 50 feet—nearly the entire perimeter of the work. The murder victim: Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III, one of four works in artist Barnett Newman’s collection of the same name completed between 1966 and 1970. Newman’s collection was polarising—the one defaced was a simple canvas painted in solid red, accented by stripes of yellow and blue. The public reaction to the collection was contentious. Some appreciated the technique of the painting, praising Barnett’s expert brushstrokes and the enormous depth he had created on a flat canvas. Most reacted with vitriol. Even before Newman’s piece was so violently murdered, the Stedelijk had been receiving letters and phone calls criticizing them for even housing the painting. Some even said it made them physically sick.

Who’s Afraid III after being destroyed. Image by Thomas Ratt, via MutualArt

After the piece was destroyed, the museum continued to receive “constructive criticism” from the public, with one letter even stating that Jan van Bladeren should “be made the director of modern art museums” for his act of vandalism. Most of the support stemmed from how unacceptably simplistic the piece was. Art is meant to be a feat of skill; staggering beauty to display for the people. The everyman couldn’t recreate Monet’s water lilies. A ten-year-old girl and a set of crayons could prove enough to make a copy of Newman’s work. 

Or so his critics thought. When the painting was restored by Daniel Goldreyer in 1991, something happened. Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III lost a fraction of its canvas soul. Many said the painting lacked the depth it had had before—Newman’s immaculate brushstrokes lost in the areas where the painting was hacked at so gracelessly. Goldreyer was accused of using house paints and a paint roller to complete the job. The restoration artist was criticized by many, eventually leading him to file a $125 million suit against the museum and the City of Amsterdam. He claimed that his reputation had been damaged. Unfortunately, so too had the painting. When the dust settled, a restoration that had initially cost some $400,000 ended up costing around $1 million. In September 2013, nearly 20 years later, the City of Amsterdam made a forensic report of the restoration public. This report revealed that Goldreyer had indeed used a paint roller, and even added varnish to the painting when it was initially unvarnished. The painting was put back on display in the Stedelijk in 2014—but the damage was done. Newman’s work would never be the same.

You could paint that, you think to yourself. What is it about the simplicity of these works that makes you believe you could complete them? In a way, the people who claim they could paint a Rothko are not much different than those who would take a weapon to one. It’s all about anger, after all. Anger at the museums, the collectors, and the fans of the works for being stupid enough to put this horseshit on display. Anger at the painters who make piles of money off scribbles on paper. Anger at everyone and everything who let this happen to the world. Do you hate modern art enough to take a knife to someone’s blood, sweat, and tears? No, you’ll just insist it could be yours.

PART TWO: STANDING TOO CLOSE

Did you know Mark Rothko recommends you look at his paintings from 18 inches away?

Rothko’s Black on Maroon is exactly what it says on the tin: maroon stripes on a black background. It was commissioned, along with some other murals, for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York City’s Seagram building. The 1958 painting now sits in London’s Tate Modern.

The man who vandalised the piece in 2012 said he was improving it.

I really didn’t mean for this essay to turn out to be about vandalism. But when it comes to a movement so often met with loathing, it is nearly impossible to defend it without delving into hatred. How can you talk about modern art without talking about its criticism? Can it exist on its own without its legacy of controversy? To that end, I’m hesitant to even name the vandals responsible for defacing the works mentioned in this essay. Isn’t that what they want? To be deemed the messiah of the anti-intellectuals, their name shouted from the rooftops of galleries filled with oil stilllifes? I fear that giving these people credit for what they call “improvements” would simply be giving into their desire to eclipse the medium they deem below them.

His name is Vladimir Umanetz.

According to The Guardian, the dripping pen on Rothko’s canvas reads “Vladimir Umanetz, a potential piece of [Y]ellowism.” 

What is Yellowism? An art movement with a Tumblr blog. 

“Yellowism is not art or anti-art,” the site reads. The manifesto, written by Umanetz and Marcin Lodyga, continues as a vapid explanation of what exactly Yellowism is–which, in layman’s terms, is a whole load of nothing. (Author’s note: if you’re in the mood to entertain a morbid curiosity–as I was–thisisyellowism.com.) 

As Umanetz said to The Guardian, he thinks his vandalism added value to Rothko’s piece. He compared himself to artists before him, saying “I didn’t destroy the picture. I did not steal anything. There was a lot of stuff like this before. Marcel Duchamp signed things that were not made by him, or even Damien Hirst.”

He did say he admired Rothko, at least.

Why does Mark Rothko think proximity brings understanding to his art?

In his recommendation of this 18-inch distance viewing, he speaks of intimacy, transcendence, and awe. On a personal level, I understand it as letting the painting swallow you. But what makes a Rothko a physical viewing experience?

I couldn’t tell you—I’ve never seen a Rothko in person.

Vladimir Umanetz has. 

Vladimir Umanetz saw a Rothko in person and decided that taking a pen to the painting would prove productive for his two-man movement.

I don’t want to keep repeating this man’s name. What did he think this would do for him? He went to prison in the end. Did he think he understood art more than Rothko because he founded his own Tumblr movement? Did he think himself above a colour block?

Umanetz is no more intelligent or intellectual than a teen on TikTok with only colouring book experience standing next to an artwork they think they could paint.

In 2014, two years after his self-inflicted climb onto the cross built by contemporary art, the vandal issued an op-ed, once again in The Guardian. After his tenure in prison, he decided that “[n]otwithstanding the negative repercussions of my actions, I believe I can use this valuable experience for good. For example, I think it is important to comment on the contemporary art world as it stands today, which to my mind isn’t good.

“Contemporary artists simply produce things which aren’t creative in their essence or spirit. Every work is a duplicate of a previous piece. It’s like dealing with exactly the same work only in different variations. The graphic designer Neville Brody once compared this condition to that of using the ingredients of different colours, shapes and sizes, where in fact real creativity is missing.”

Who are you, Umanetz?

Have you stood 18 inches away from a Rothko painting in your lifetime?

What do you think makes you any sort of authority?

I’m torn between scorn and sadness. Don’t you understand the gravity of what you did? Of what you continue to do? I ask this of Umanetz, but also of every anti-intellectual teen on TikTok: don’t you get it?

It doesn’t matter. As long as men like Umanetz exist, as long as anti-intellectualism thrives, as long as modern art is diminished to a hole in a wall—

No one will take it seriously.

PART THREE: FEEL IT, MOTHERFUCKERS

Here’s an easy one: an electric fan in a glass box. 

John S. Boskovich’s 1997 Electric Fan (Feel It Motherfuckers): Only Unclaimed Item from the Stephen Earabino Estate is just that. An electric fan encased in acrylic glass. You could do that tomorrow, probably.

Boskovich created this piece for his partner, fashion stylist Stephen Earabino. They lived together in Los Angeles. Earabino died of AIDS-related complications in 1995. His family emptied out their apartment after his funeral. The only thing left of either of theirs was an electric fan.

There are holes poked in the glass so the air can escape.

Do you get it yet?

PART FOUR: I COULD DO THAT

Yeah, you probably could.

PART FIVE: CONCLUSION

I wonder, what of these people who rebel against modern art? What groundbreakingly traditional work would they create if they had the chance? But of these people, I also wonder—when the time finally comes, will you have a thing to say that’s not a realistic depiction of something else? Will you not one day suffer a tragedy greater than you’ve ever known and struggle to understand what follows? Won’t you scratch at the walls of the universe, trying to make sense of it? Won’t you scream and cry and kick and fight and grasp at some sort of answer?

I hope you won’t need to understand this pain one day, the pain that created all of my favourite works, but I know you will. You could convey loss in a Romantic painting, sure. But The Fallen Angel was not created in a search for answers. These paintings were the answer. Most acrylic closes the conversation once the apple’s final brushstroke is completed.

Modern art is a question.

What will become of a lover’s memory when he dies at the hands of an apathetic government, and all that is left behind is an electric fan? What can I do? Where do I go? This is all I have left of him.

You can search for a solution in the works of the Renaissance. Paint a pretty picture of some clouds, albeit with great technique. But can you scream at their sky? Can you take a mundanity and make it mean something? Can you bring a thought to more than the brushstrokes? 

I don’t believe in methodical artists. A true artist, no matter their medium, wants to create—wants to spend their life in search of a way to pose questions without needing answers. To take an all-encompassing pain and splash it on a billboard, just to make a stranger feel just a fraction of what they do. To sacrifice everything for a moment of light, of truth, of an escape from hurt, of the ecstasy of creation. 

An artist’s talent is the ability to make someone else understand them.

You could do that, sure. But are you willing to?

MORE

Some works I wanted to include, but could not find the space for;

Author’s note: Not a piece of art, but the 1991 album “Rothko Chapel” by Morton Feldman is also a great listen.

Sources and further reading;

The Collector

99% Invisible

The Guardian

The Guardian (again)

Yellowism