Was it a crime or an "act of love"? A French artist is on trial for leaving a lipstick-red kiss on a pure white canvas (valued at €2 million - isn't that insane?) of US artist Cy Twombly.
Rindy Sam, a 30-year-old French artist, faced charges of “voluntarily damaging a work of art.” The painting is worth an estimated $2,830,000 and restorers have tried to remove the lipstick smudge from the bone-white canvas using nearly 30 products — to no avail.
“I didn’t think. When I kissed it, I thought the artist would have understood,” Sam told the court in the southern French city of Avignon, describing it as “an act of love.”
Second, this is not about the merit of the art. I think it sounds silly, too. And yes, that a canvas painted white could be worth millions is kind of ridiculous. But, that's not the issue here. The issue here is that she defaced something that wasn't hers.
I'm not exactly a fan of private property, and I'm certainly not against vandalism on principle, so I'm not going to call for her head. But what you need to recognize is that if you're saying she should get off, you're saying vandalism is ok.
And even if only two people were to care for it -- the artist, and the collector -- it would still be valuable to those people. Why is that a bad thing? You like what you like, and they like what they like. I don't understand the vitriol I'm reading in so many of these posts.