9. Mark Rothko’s Black On Maroon Tagged
A Russian artist who defaced a Mark Rothko mural in the Tate Modern gallery later claimed the act as a piece of art that had improved the value of the multimillion-pound work. The Metropolitan Police art squad subsequently investigated the incident at the museum in which the art vandal inscribed a number of words in black ink in a corner of Rothko’s 1958 canvas ‘Black on Maroon’, before quickly skipping away. A visitor to the museum who posted a picture on Twitter of the defaced canvas said that he saw the man sitting quietly in front of the painting beforehand. In the picture, the black ink on the canvas appears to read: “Vladimir Umanets, a potential piece of yellowism.” Obviously the perpetrator did not go on to a career in comedy.