Picasso Vandal Sentenced
September 1 2020
Picture: Artsy
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A twenty-year-old student who vandalised Picasso's Bust of a Woman (1944) at Tate Modern last December has been sentenced to eighteenth months in prison. The student, who attacked the work with metal padlocks, managed to punch through the protective glass and tear it off the wall. Fortunately, the judge managed to see through the defendant's claims that this was part of an elaborate piece of performance art. It also transpires that the painting was in fact a loan from a private collection. One can only imagine how awful that telephone call must have been.
Furthermore, artnet have reported:
In court, experts testified that repair efforts would take up to 18 months and cost over $450,000.
Although it seems that the damage was extensive, these costs do sound quite astronomical. It reminds me of the $487,625 figure that was supposedly spent on fixing a tear in a Picasso that was damaged at Christie's in 2018.
