8. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica Spray-painted
Sometimes acts of vandalism can have rather sanctimonious motives. In 1974, an art vandal named Tony Shafrazi wrote “KILL LIES ALL” with red spray paint over the work ‘Guernica’ by Pablo Picasso. Shafrazi was ostensibly protesting Richard Nixon’s pardon of William Calley for the latter’s actions during the My Lai massacre. Luckily the paint was removed with relative ease from the varnished surface. In 1976, only a few years after the spray painting incident, Shafrazi returned to his homeland and became the art advisor to the Shah of Iran and Kamran Diba, then director of the Teheran Museum of Contemporary Art. Shafrazi went to about 15 of the top New York dealers at the time. In 1999, the Francis Bacon estate chose Shafrazi as its United States representative. In 2004, the gallery opened a space in New York with a large show of paintings including Picasso. Artlyst guesses Shafrazi might have exclaimed ‘I am not a crook!’ during his job interview.