Take a bare, white room.
Cover with plastic wrap.
Hang cheap replicas of famous paintings in room.
Provide visitors with buckets of paint, art utensils, and full-body smocks.
Let them loose in room.
Watch chaos ensue.
If any paintings remain recognizable, sell them as "Famous Defaced Paintings".
Repeat steps 3-7.
Enjoy.

(A ten-second idea from Jem)
-- Jem, Feb 19 2003

Smothering Art http://yin.arts.uci...shopF/Junkshop.html
Getting rid of zero-value art IN STYLE! [Jem, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]

Baked since 1919 http://www.artofcol...no6-files/lhooq.jpg
[DrCurry, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]

Daubism http://www.google.c...&btnG=Google+Search
Take yer pick [thumbwax, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]

as interpreted by our very own Gen. Washington http://www.leveritt.com/paintyshoes.jpg
[po, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]

Jake & Dinos Chapman draw all over some Goya prints http://www.guardian...3604,926092,00.html
[hippo, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]

I like it! (5 second annotation)
-- bristolz, Feb 19 2003


Didn't Marcel Duchamp do this once?
-- DrCurry, Feb 19 2003


Who's been watching Freeserve ads, then?
-- egbert, Feb 19 2003


[Dimandja] One year for Christmas my dad got a ball shaped like Larry's head (from the 3 Stooges) that made a recorded painful exclamation whenever you threw it against a solid surface. We knew it wasn't the still-living, disembodied head of Larry Fine that we were smashing against various walls and floors, but it was a fun stress reliever all the same. Just goes to show that something doesn't have to be real for you to enjoy destroying it.

[DrCurry] This idea is interactive, making it fundamentally different because the public can participate in the destruction/creation - plus, it's also a stress-reliever; haven't you had one of those days when you just wanted to go mess up a famous work of art? <grin>
-- Jem, Feb 19 2003


Start with Pollocks. You won't be able to tell which ones are defaced.
-- waugsqueke, Feb 19 2003


I'm going to have to say (-). What mr Bean did to Whistler's Mother made me wince so badly.
-- madradish, Feb 20 2003


I'm trying, unsuccessfully so far, to understand why you'd have an urge to deface a famous work of art. I understand that the idea specifies that cheap replicas are defaced, and I can even understand how new artistic statements could be made in such a manner. But your comments seem to indicate that it all comes from some deep frustrated desire to destroy something the world values highly. That's what I can't understand.
-- beauxeault, Feb 20 2003


Isn't this what Photoshop is for?
-- my face your, Feb 20 2003


Yeah, I have rethought my positive vote for this idea. I'm in [beauxeault]'s camp on this one now.

An anecdote: when I was about 14 (early 1988) I went to London for the first time with my parents and visited, amongst other places, the National Gallery. Of the things I most wanted to see was the ink study/cartoon done by da Vinci. There were signs pointing the way to where the artwork was supposed to be but, alas, the work itself was nowhere to be found. When my mother made an inquiry of a guard as to where the work was he replied that the summer before someone had sneaked a shotgun into the gallery and shot the work at point-blank range.

It saddened me so much that I cried.

I think the work has been restored now but I have yet to see it in person.
-- bristolz, Feb 20 2003


I'd vote for it if you made the art post-its scented.
-- Worldgineer, Feb 21 2003


Sounds like great stress relief. It appeals to me on several levels: the generic "I'm stressed and I wanna break crap" level, the "frustrated artist" level, and the related "a lot of art is famous just because people thik it should be and a lot of it isn't actually very good or even interesting, and I HATE that!" level.
-- Tabbyclaw, Apr 02 2003


I think if its fake art then you should only have to fake deface it.

I would like to point out that there great difference between defacement / destruction done with a shotgun and general modification such as the addition of a moustache to the Mona Lisa or a huge plasticine bobble phallus to David.

Finally, in that story from [bristolz], I wonder what it was about Leo's cartoon that steered the gun toter to that particular artwork. It sounds like an incident out of a fantasy novel. Maybe there was more to that cartoon than met the eye.
-- bungston, Apr 02 2003


oooh! i like this. what about using them as targets in paintball battles?
also, maybe not ALL great art, but stuff like elvis on black velvet and similarly crappy crap.
-- igirl, Apr 03 2003



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