Art Market

A painting at the Centre Pompidou was stabbed by a knife-wielding museumgoer.

Wallace Ludel
Sep 16, 2019 4:00PM, via AFP

The Centre Pompidou in Paris. Photo by GraphyArchy, via Wikimedia Commons.

A painting by the 81-year-old French conceptual artist Daniel Buren was attacked by a knife-wielding museumgoer at Paris’s Centre Pompidou on Thursday. The museum said in a statement that the acrylic on canvas painting, Peinture [Manifestation 3] (1967), suffered “serious deliberate damage” and that, though the attacker was seen clearly on video camera, “he made no claim (over the attack) and was handed over to the police,” according to an AFP report.

The perpetrator has since been transferred to a psychiatric unit. The spot where the painting hung will be filled with another work of Buren’s as the museum’s conservation team works to repair the damaged painting.

The attack came a little more than a week after a guerilla work created by famed British street artist Banksy outside of the Pompidou was stolen. The work by Banksy depicted a rat with bandana and utility knife, and the artist installed it around the 50th anniversary of the May 1968 uprisings. The Pompidou did not technically own the Banksy and was only able to file for destruction of property.

Further Reading: The Armory Show Plays Unlikely Host to a Daniel Buren Mini-Retrospective

Wallace Ludel