Art vandalism: neutralisation, media validation and a case of Yellowism

By Gretchen Allen

The media’s propagation of justifying rhetoric and neutralization techniques of artistically-motivated art vandals gains them a sympathetic audience and legitimizes their beliefs at the expense of art, museums, and the public. This is exemplified by the heavy coverage of Yellowism following the 2012 vandalism of Mark Rothko’s Black on Maroon (1958) at the Tate Modern. This article examines the pattern of legitimization of “artistic” art vandals in academic writing, and discusses how the conception of what makes an artist leads to the lack of unequivocal condemnation in academia and popular media, which shapes the perception of a vandal and their ideology.

Inside the Tate Modern, sourced from < https://www.wallpaperflare.com/bar-buildings-city-cityscape-cityview-lake-people-restaurant-wallpaper-asolv&gt;

Vandalism against art fascinates us, the public. Art and the sometimes rarefied spaces that display it have a powerful, almost sacred aura. This characterization is upheld by Pierre Bourdieu’s typology of cultural capital, in which art is considered ‘objectified cultural capital’ that indicates the possessor has a high degree of ‘embodied cultural capital’: social power through cultural literacy (Bourdieu, 1986). Creating and/or appreciating art is seen to require education and fine taste, which grant entry into exclusive cultural spaces. This invests works of art with potent symbolism, both as something to be owned and as something to be understood. The power of art can also be harnessed to suit political and ideological aims, and doing so can invest the appropriator with their own cache of cultural capital.

In addition to cultural capital, high-profile works of art take on intense emotional value: awe, national identity, cultural symbolism, historical significance, etc. Any number of human experiences can be encapsulated by specific works of art because of the emotional significance granted to art by its viewers, creators, and owners. Beloved works become iconic focal points for the culture that created them. This is evident when comparing the language used to describe mundane vandalism– ‘destruction of property’, ‘being reckless’, ‘damage’ (Criminal Damage Act 1971)– with that used to describe intentional art vandalism: ‘attacks’ or ‘assaults’, and perpetrators as ‘assailants’, as though the art was a human victim (Barker & Ormsby, n.d.; Buker, 2015; Ingram, 2014; Lerner, 2013; McCouat, 2014; McKim-Smith, 2002; Scott, 2013; Tate, 2014).

Diego Velázquez, Rokeby Venus 1647, sourced from <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vandalized_Rokeby_Venus_1914.jpg&gt;

Given the cultural and emotional power of famous art, art vandalism has the potential to be extremely provocative; a quality centuries of vandals have exploited. When Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus was attacked with a cleaver by a militant suffragette, scholar Philip Mccouat (2014) states, ‘the language used was consistent with that of a sensational murder, with the Venus figure being described as a “victim”, and the damage as “cruel wounds”, “broad lacerations”, or “ragged bruises”’. Scholar Gridley McKim-Smith (2002) compared the language used in cases of art vandalism to that used to describe sexual assault, ‘These acts register an implicit belief that the painting is more than an inert combination of pigment and support, and language also describes damaged paintings as if they were living victims’.

Academic validation of vandal’s justifying rhetoric

Just as there is a long tradition of art vandalism there is also a long tradition of analyzing the motives of art vandals. They are interesting from a criminological and sociological standpoint because they are prime examples of neutralization techniques and justifying rhetoric. “Neutralization technique” is a phrase coined by David Matza and Gresham Sykes in their 1957 publication on the methods used by juvenile delinquents to avoid taking blame for deviant behavior (Sykes & Matza, 1957). They created a typology of neutralization: denial of responsibility (“It wasn’t my fault”), denial of injury (“I did it but didn’t hurt anyone”), denial of the victim (“I did it but they deserved it”), condemnation of the condemners (“I’m bad but you’re worse”), and appeal to higher loyalties (“I had to do it for good reasons”).

Criminologist John E. Conklin (1994) cites Matza and Sykes’ typology to explain how art criminals justify the crimes they plan to commit; once the crime has been committed, a criminal’s excuses become justifying rhetoric based in how the criminal previously neutralized the crime. This involves ‘asserting that their behavior is consistent with commonly accepted values and therefore morally acceptable’ (Conklin, 1994). These techniques are especially relevant in the case of ideologically or artistically-motivated art vandalism, as the provocative nature of the crime invites onlookers to ask the perpetrator why they did it; the vandal’s chance to publicize their cause is often the goal behind the attack.

Conklin (1994) has his own typology of motivated vandals: political vandals, vandals avenging offended morality, bored vandals, and vandals seeking pragmatic gain. Subsequent scholars identified another subset of motivated vandal: the art vandal claiming to make art by vandalising another artist’s work (Buker, 2015; Gmelin, 1996; Gould, 2015; Ingram, 2014; Lerner, 2013; Scott, 2010; Williams, 2009). Articles on the topic feature similar lineups of “artist” vandals listed alongside their justifying rhetoric. Among the most cited are: Tony Shafrazi “updating” Guernica for the Vietnam War with the spray-painted slogan ‘KILL LIES ALL’ (Freeman, 2019; Gmelin, 1996; Lerner, 2013; Scott, 2013); Chinese performance artists Yuan Cai and Jian Jun Xi frolicking shirtless in Tracey Emin’s My Bed and declaring it a separate piece of performance art (Scott, 2013); Mark Bridger pouring black ink into Damian Hirst’s Away from the Flock before switching out the piece’s curatorial wall text and title for his own (Gmelin, 1996; Scott, 2013); and the ever-growing number of men (including musician Brian Eno) who have perpetuated the “mini-tradition” of urinating on Duchamp’s readymade urinal sculpture Fountain (Gmelin, 1996; Ingram, 2014; Lerner, 2013).

These “artist” vandals, many identifying themselves as artists, claim to be “in dialogue” with the artist whose work they violated: a popular explanation. For example after peeing on Fountain many claimed that they were following Duchamp’s Dadaist example and appropriating the “readymade” (in this case, works of art by other artists) as their own art (Buker, 2015; Cray, 2015; Gmelin, 1996; Ingram, 2014; Scott, 2013; Williams, 2009). Academics tend to treat this justification as at least semi-valid; this group of “usual suspects” is commonly listed as the “unauthorized” counterpart to authorized “interventions” by Robert Rauschenberg, Duchamp, and the Futurists, most of whom had ownership over or permission to change the objects they appropriated (Buker, 2015; Cray, 2015; Ingram, 2014; Scott, 2013; Williams, 2009). Even decisive condemnation of the “unauthorized” vandals in these articles is softened by mentioning them alongside more established artists, and by using terms like “interventionists”.

Marcel Duchamp at the Fountain 1917, sourced from <https://www.flickr.com/photos/salim/83124610&gt;
The Fountain 1917, sourced from <https://www.flickr.com/photos/centralasian/5500464757&gt;

Art historian Dario Gamboni (1966) makes the case that conceptions of art and vandalism are mutable and relative. He explains, ‘Anonymous and individual assaults on works of art in public places and in museums occupy the highest position on the scale of illegitimacy in destruction. At the other extreme, one finds eliminations and transformations that their authors and supporters justify, often in aesthetic terms, as necessary means for positive ends, and which … may simply not be considered and labelled as destruction’ (Gamboni, 1996). Gamboni is discussing the destruction of 16th century buildings by 18th century reformers, but a similar attitude applies in artistic art vandalism: one artist’s act of artistic radicalism is another’s base property damage. This is where critical and academic reactions to “artistic” art vandalism become essential. Conklin (1994) states, ‘the response of critics to works of art, especially innovative ones, can legitimate controversial styles. Because they provide reasons for people to think that works are ‘good art’, critics are important in creating and maintaining value’. It follows that art vandalism claiming to be art could become legitimized as art if enough critics and scholars agree.

While the cases of art vandalism mentioned earlier are rarely characterized unreservedly as works of art, most authors also stop short of condemning them as “not art”, considering their destructive actions bear a superficial resemblance to those of past art world provocateurs. Parallels are often drawn between the justifications of artistically-motivated vandals and the political justifications of ideologically-motivated art vandals such as suffragettes Mary Wood and Mary Richardson who attacked paintings with knives, black students who graffitied a Confederate monument, and political dissidents in China who threw paint on a portrait of Chairman Mao (Conklin, 1994; Lerner, 2013; McCouat, 2014; McKim-Smith, 2002; Scott, 2013). While the similarities are evident, equating acts of “artistic” vandalism with those committed in favor of now-mainstream Western causes (women’s suffrage, anti-racism, anti-Maoism) casts art-motivated art vandalism as radical–yet, eventually, socially acceptable–civil disobedience.

The historic reluctance of museums to punish offenders also grants a degree of legitimacy to the justifying rhetoric of vandals. Tony Shafrazi, the Guernica vandal, received 5 years probation with no trial and recalled, ‘the judge asked me if I would promise never to do it again’ (Freeman, 2019; Kaufman, 1974; McKim-Smith, 2002). Far from languishing in remorse and obscurity Shafrazi then went on to become a highly successful art dealer (ironically in graffiti art) who counts movie stars among his close friends (Freeman, 2019). One need only read two headlines, written over forty years apart, to see the evolution: ‘‘Guernica’ survives spray-paint attack by vandal’ (Kaufman, 1974) to ‘How Tony Shafrazi went from vandalizing ‘Guernica’ to inventing a market for graffiti art’ (Freeman, 2019).

Under-reporting and under-charging are massive problems when it comes to analyzing, punishing, and deterring art vandalism. Helen E. Scott’s (2007) survey of UK art museums and galleries found that of the 250 institutions contacted roughly half failed to identify the pepretrators of vandalism, let alone press charges against them. More worrisome still, Scott revealed that it had became increasingly clear that many institutions did not even keep a record of incidents of vandalism (Scott, 2010). She recommended that museums press charges against vandals and educate the public in order to prevent future crimes but few museums had taken those measures at the time of the survey, with many reporting target-hardening measures instead (Scott, 2010).

The light punishments also reflect a lack of differentiation in UK law between mundane vandalism and art vandalism. Attorney M.J. Williams (2009) made the case that the law needs to recognize both and punish them separately. In 2015, new sentencing guidelines were made, but mainly focused on the theft of scrap material from heritage sites (Williams, 2009). The lackadaisical approach on the part of museums and the law coupled with the prevalence of vandalism uncovered in Scott’s survey reinforces Conklin’s point that ‘… lenient treatment that fails to recognize the sociocultural significance of art will not deter vandals and may actually encourage acts of destruction by communicating to the general population that art vandalism is a trivial offence’ (Conklin, 1994; Scott, 2010). Apathy towards punishment coupled with the art world’s reluctance to disavow the justifying rhetoric of art vandals provides aspiring vandals with a low-risk, ideologically validating outlet for their attention-seeking efforts that, if high profile enough, will likely gain them a receptive audience.

The Rothko attack

In October of 2012, a man entered the gallery where Mark Rothko’s monumental Seagram Murals (1958-59) were displayed in the Tate Modern. Approaching one of the nine canvases, he scribbled in the painting’s bottom left corner with a black graffiti pen before making his exit (Barker & Ormsby, n.d.; Barker, Ormsby, Keefe, & Wills, 2018; Collins, 2012; Lerner, 2013; Scott, 2013; Umanets, 2014). A stunned witness posted a photo on Twitter, and within seconds the vandal’s message had spread worldwide (Wright, 2012):

VLADIMIR

UMANETS ‘12

A POTENTIAL

PIECE OF YELLOWIS

                  M

The young man turned out to be Vladimir Umanets (né Wlodzimierz Umaniec) who was arrested within days of the attack (BBC, 2012a; Brown, 2012; Collins, 2012; Umanets, 2014). Conservators at the Tate Modern estimated the damage would take up to 18 months to repair, at great expense (BBC, 2012). Umanets was sentenced to two years in prison, with news outlets quoting the presiding judge saying it was, ‘wholly and utterly unacceptable to promote [Yellowism] by damaging a work of art’, which he called a ‘gift to the nation’ (BBC, 2012a; Brown, 2012). Meanwhile, outside the courthouse, BBC News quoted a second Yellowist saying ‘Everything is equal. Everything is art. Everything is a potential piece of yellowism’ (BBC, 2012a). Journalists wanted to know: what was Yellowism?

The media amplification and legitimization of Yellowism

Before the attack, Yellowism was a two-person movement co-founded by Umanets and Marcin Łodyga (Cray, 2015; Startled Horse, n.d.; “ThisIsYellowism,” n.d.). They ran a Tumblr blog that featured their manifesto, explanatory text about their philosophy, and photos of bikini-clad models (Umanets & Łodyga, n.d.-a). In their manifesto they describe Yellowism as ‘neither art, nor anti-art’, but ‘autonomous phenomenon in contemporary visual culture. It derived from the visual arts and despite this fact, is not classified as art’ (Umanets & Łodyga, n.d.-a, n.d.-b). The duo had had three exhibitions in various Yellowistic chambers, with the most recent in London in May of 2012 (Halperin, 2012; Lee, n.d.; Yellowism, 2014). They also had a Youtube channel with five videos (two containing more bikini models; one showing the two co-founders eating McDonalds and two showing the opening of Yellowistic chambers in London, both of which were named after models) (Halperin, 2012; “ThisIsYellowism,” n.d.), and a Twitter account @ThisIsYellowism (Yellowism, 2012). The latter had no tweets before December 19th 2012, six days after Umanets was sentenced (BBC, 2012a; Brown, 2012). The account’s first entry is a retweet of a call for his freedom: ‘Release the Yellowist One! Mark Rothko will be turning in his Purplish grave…’ (Yellowism, 2012).

Yellowism in yellowistic chambers, sourced from: <https://www.flickr.com/photos/duncan/6649386899/&gt;

After the attack, the media profile of Yellowism skyrocketed. Multiple articles across major British media platforms attempted to explain the rambling philosophy, often by quoting extensively from the Tumblr manifesto (BBC, 2012, 2012, 2012b; Halperin, 2012). Many included interviews with Umanets and Lodyga in which they were asked to explain their philosophy at length– some led with Umanets’s claim that he was not a vandal, merely claiming Rothko’s work as a potential component of his movement using Duchamp-ian appropriation (BBC, 2012, 2012, 2012b; Halperin, 2012). The BBC News article Vladimir Umanets: ‘I was not Defacing Mark Rothko Work’ features a sidebar by Arts Editor Will Gompertz that likened Umanets’s actions to Duchamp’s Fountain, and listed Umanets alongside the Chapman Brothers and Rauschenberg as ‘among many artists that subsequently followed the Frenchman’s interventionist lead’ (BBC, 2012). A second sidebar within the same article entitled What is Yellowism? quotes liberally from the manifesto, mentions their recent exhibition and the exhibition’s publicity text (BBC, 2012).

The Telegraph (2012) directly quoted the manifesto in the headline, ‘Yellowism: ‘Neither art, nor anti-art…it is about yellow’, with the body of the article composed almost entirely from manifesto excerpts and quotes from Umanets and Łodyga. Even the scathing New Yorker article A Vandal in the Tate still printed most of the manifesto after the author dubbed Umanets ‘The latest entrant to the ranks of these Y.B.A.’s—Young British Assholes’ (Collins, 2012). This favorable coverage broadcast the justifying rhetoric used by the Yellowists all over the news. The Huffington Post embedded a very sympathetic short documentary made about the pair by creator Startled Horse (Startled Horse, 2013, n.d.). The video shows an interview with Umanets intercut with an interview with Łodyga that is filmed inside the Tate Modern. When Umanets finishes speaking the audio cuts to Nina Simone singing ‘I’m just a soul whose intentions were good/ oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood’ (Startled Horse, n.d.).

Predictably, despite the alias “Vladimir Umanets” being an anagram for “I’m true vandalism” (Cray, 2015), the rhetoric coming from Umanets was full of neutralizing techniques and justifications for why his actions should not be considered “vandalism”. He claimed to be engaging in a dialogue with the artist and the art: ‘Speaking to the BBC, Mr. Umanets compared himself with the surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp. He said: ‘Art allows us to take what someone’s done and put a new message on it’… and that he hoped he would ‘be considered as someone who really creates’’ (BBC, 2012). This standard vandal rhetoric is built on multiple neutralization techniques: it denies injury by insisting the art is there to be “intervened with” in dialogue with other artists, it denies the victim by claiming to critique the structures of the art world, it condemns the condemners as hypocrites for calling his work “vandalism” and Duchamp’s work “art”, and it appeals to the higher loyalties that art enthusiasts feel towards revolutionary radicalism in art (Sykes & Matza, 1957).

In the Startled Horse interview, Umanets equates himself and Duchamp when he says of the Rothko, ‘I treat it just as a potential piece of Yellowism, the work as a readymade work … Signed by me and with a new title, and I don’t regret any of this as I don’t regret any of my previous works’ (Startled Horse, n.d.). These appeals to be recognized as a follower of Duchamp are attempts to enshrine himself as a revolutionary artist in the same mold, attempts that succeeded when he was described as such by former director of Tate Media and BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz (BBC, 2012). In an interview with the BBC, when the interviewer asks Umanets why he has to deface another artist’s work to promote his own, Umanets reiterates that he does not consider the act to be defacement (BBC, 2012). He quotes his own manifesto as justification, stating ‘Yellowism is not art, or anti art’ (BBC, 2012). When placed alongside the neutralization techniques mentioned earlier the manifesto actually garbles the message: if Yellowism is not art then there is no reason to claim the appropriation of a Rothko as art, or to couch the act in Duchamp-ian terms. Łodyga complicates the rhetoric further when he stated ‘The main difference between art and yellowism is that in yellowism you don’t have creativity’ (Startled Horse, n.d.). In addition to the confusion among the two founding Yellowists as to whether or not creativity is the goal, their own self-description as “not art” is often contradicted both by media publications and the Yellowists’ own press, which frequently refer to them as “artists” (Free Yellowism, 2013). This mixed messaging caused some critics to accept Umanets’s rhetoric as at least partially valid.

As in-depth coverage of Yellowism soared journalists amplified those mixed signals and academics, critics, blogs, and social media joined the discourse with their own analysis. On one side were the nay-sayers. Julia Halperin, writing for Blouin, summarized her research experience: ‘After an hour spent watching dull videos and reading manifestos, here is what we can tell you: Yellowism appears to be a novel — if violent, misguided, and, to many, abhorrent — update to Situationism and appropriation art’ (Halperin, 2012). She expressed her distaste for the co-founders’ evident ‘adolescent obsession’ with swimsuit models, and declared that ‘Some works of art are simply too weighty to yield to Yellowism’ (Halperin, 2012). In addition to in-depth critique some covered the incident with dripping sarcasm, for example the New Yorker dubbed Umanets a “Young British Asshole” and Art Monthly contained a satirical column suggesting Yellowism’s manifesto was ‘as useful as the Coldplay lyrics that might have inspired the movement’ (Anonymous, 2012; Collins, 2012).

On the other side were Umanets’s defenders, ranging from lukewarm to passionate. In addition to Umanets’s fellow Yellowists protesting his arrest blog articles with titles like Why Art Needs Yellowism (and You’re all Fucking Wrong) and Wlodzimierz Umaniec Deserves a Doctorate and the Turner Prize, not Prison began to pop up to decry his “excessive” sentence (Boot, 2012; Rodger, 2013). A Change.org petition to free Umanets was established (Fletcher, 2013). Different ideologies started claiming Yellowism, with one blogger describing it as ‘Fascist Dada’ while another stated ‘The Rothko vandal makes his Marx’ (Chasin, 2012; Rodger, 2013). Sympathetic Twitter accounts appeared by the dozen to retweet articles about the vandalism and show their support, with usernames like @FREEyellowism, @APPOYbyUmanets (APPOY: “A potential piece of Yellowism”), and one likely satirical one claiming to be @VladimirUmanets himself. Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones even blamed the Tate Modern for enabling an atmosphere ‘where vandals feel at home’ in a tone-deaf article entitled Why Tate Modern Should Show Rothko a Little Respect (Jones, 2014).

Academic criticism of the Rothko attack tended towards semi-centrism, though even when refusing to fully condone Umanets’s work some gave him more leeway. Critic Ben Lerner describes vandals as aspiring to, but not achieving, the level of artistic merit of established “interventionists”. He calls the vandalism ‘an act made to be Googled’, and the Yellowist manifesto ‘Neo-Dadaist nonsense’ but argues for the preservation of the radical vandal as a necessary figure in the art world (Lerner, 2013). He opines ‘If we ultimately believe a vandal is a vandal because he devalues someone else’s property, then art-world radicalism doesn’t look very radical at all’ (Lerner, 2013). Most other academics simply add Umanets to the “usual suspects” lineups, albeit under the subcategory of “unauthorized” destruction (Buker, 2015; Scott, 2013).

Taking the opposite view to Lerner, Helen E. Scott (2013) describes a similar vandal who defaced Malevich’s White Cross as ‘more a parasite than an artist’ and calls for decisive punitive action by museums: ‘Galleries that grudgingly accept attackers’ ‘artistic’ justifications, or even those that simply resist making a judgment on them, essentially serve to validate these acts and in doing so embolden other world-be assailants’. Outside the art world philosopher Wesley Cray (2015) performed an ontological analysis of Yellowism and found it ‘problematic’. He specifically interrogates the Yellowists’ claim to follow in the footsteps of Duchamp and other interventionists:


There are, however, important disanalogies between Duchamp’s transfigurations and Umanets’ (potential) transfigurations. Duchamp possessed, in some sense, dominion over the objects he transfigured and, in cases in which he didn’t, such as that of the Woolworth Building, he is often taken to have failed in his attempt at transfiguration. Umanets’s reliance on Duchamp’s precedent, then, can only be taken so far, since that precedent is … not the precedent the Yellowists followed. Duchamp, Rauschenberg, Mad for Real, and others have transfigured objects … into art works, working within the confines of the established concept of art while still pushing the boundaries of that concept. The Yellowists, by contrast, aim to transfigure objects … into pieces of Yellowism, employing a concept with no establishment or pre-existing culture, convention, or history, but instead merely stipulated into existence.

Cray, 2015


Cray also recognizes that academic discussion (including his paper, and this one) plays a role in “enfranchising” dubious philosophies like Yellowism (Cray, 2015). However, even when viewed with skepticism or contempt, Umanets still enjoys his tiny place in history next to the philosophy he invented, and it cost the public one celebrated painting and a £300,000 conservation effort.

The aftermath for the art and for the vandal

According to Helen E. Scott’s recommendations to address and prevent art vandalism, the Tate followed the best possible course of action (Scott, 2010). After they successfully pressed charges against Umanets the Tate Britain held an exhibition called Art Under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm in an effort to educate the public on the history of art vandalism (Tate, n.d.). In response Yellowists hosted their own exhibition, Dada’s Little Bitch, to protest “misrepresentation” of Yellowism by the Tate (Free Yellowism, 2013). In 2014 Umanets issued a public apology in the Guardian in which he reiterated Yellowist rhetoric, condemning the mercenary contemporary art market and saying his main regret about the attack was that the public had turned against Yellowism (Umanets, 2014).

The conserved painting was unveiled in 2014, along with the Tate’s documentary about the conservation process, both of which were heavily publicized (Barker & Ormsby, n.d.; Barker et al., 2018; Tate, 2014). The celebration of the restored work began to push Umanets and his philosophy out of the media coverage of the case: the Telegraph, which had once reprinted most of his manifesto, now called him ‘obscure’ with ‘a nonsensical blog … which claimed to pose questions about the nature of art’ (Singh, 2014). The BBC and the Guardian barely mentioned Yellowism in their coverage of the newly-unveiled painting (BBC, 2014; Brown, 2014). Artist Anish Kapoor condemned the vandalism outright, saying ‘There is a big difference between being a radical and being a vandal and acts of vandalism are simply that…there is no symbolic value in it at all’ (Barker et al., 2018). Yellowism’s social media presence, which was extremely active and vocal during Umanets’s imprisonment, went quiet in 2016 (Yellowism, 2016). New sentencing guidelines regarding the vandalism of heritage sites were introduced in 2015, partially as a result of the Rothko vandalism (Gould, 2015). It seemed as though, as one of the Tate conservators said, ‘a once highly sensationalised act is now quietly archived in the Tate’s conservation files and the memories of those of us involved in its repair’ (Barker et al., 2018).

Mark Rothko, Black on Maroon 1958, sourced from <https://www.flickr.com/photos/markhillary/2937630924&gt;

Conclusions

Unfortunately, the massive press coverage of Yellowism has guaranteed that the impact of this attack will never fade away completely. The reaction to the vandalism shows that even when a museum takes all the “right” measures (pressing charges, public education, lack of overt target-hardening), a vandal can still profit from sympathetic press and academic writing. Even as Yellowism seems to have lost momentum, it has been immortalized in academic print, press media, and even made it onto Wikipedia (though, fortunately, neither Umanets nor Yellowism has their own page) (Black on Maroon, 2018). The creators of the aspiring movement received jail time and public ridicule, but they also received massive international platforms from which to broadcast their justifying rhetoric to the public at large, earning them publicity, sympathy, and notoriety, all of which were their own reward.


About the author: Gretchen Allen is a Book and Paper Conservator living and working in Ireland. She earned her BA in Art Conservation from Scripps College (Claremont, CA, USA), her MA in Conservation from Camberwell College of Arts (London, UK), and her PGCert in Antiquities Trafficking and Art Crime from the University of Glasgow (Glasgow, UK). Aside from the criminological aspects of the art market, Gretchen’s academic interests include conservation of items damaged during historical conflicts and the conservation and creation of illuminated manuscripts. Gretchen is trained in traditional Celtic illumination techniques and enjoys drawing, painting, and printmaking.

Disclaimer: this article is intended for educational purposes, and does not purport to provide legal advice. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author.

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