A controversial painting by artist Miriam Cahn was vandalized yesterday May 7 at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
At around 3:30 p.m., a visitor to the museum removed a can of purple paint hidden in a medicine bottle and defaced the Swiss artist’s canvas. In a statement to France Media Agency, the Palais de Tokyo described the vandal as an “elderly man” who acted independently. He was apprehended by security guards and evacuated from the scene by the police.
The museum now plans to file a complaint for “degradation of property and obstruction of freedom of expression”.
Myriam Cahn, fucking abstraction! (2007-2022) . Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Jocelyn Wolff and Meyer Riegger Berlin/Karlsruhe. Photo by Francois Doury.
Cahn’s work, titled fucking abstraction! has been the subject of a lively cultural controversy in France since his retrospective ” My Serial Thought ” (“My Serial Thought”), opened at the museum in February.
The painting depicts a faceless man receiving fellatio from a smaller, kneeling figure whose hands are tied behind his back. Right-wing critics claimed the scene depicts the sexual abuse of a child, but Cahn argued it was created in response to reports of murders and rapes by Russian soldiers during their invasion from the Ukrainian town of Bucha last year.
Despite its degradation, the institution plans to keep Cahn’s painting on display until the end of the exhibition next week.
“We regret the extreme consequences of this controversy,” said the president of the Palais de Tokyo, Guillaume Désanges, in a press release.
“In agreement with the artist”, he added, the museum “will continue to present the painting and the exhibition… with the traces of degradation until the planned end of the [exhibition]May 14.
Following the incident, photos of Cahn’s canvas covered in spray paint quickly circulated online as social media users alternately defended the artist’s message and praised the act of vandalism believed to misrepresent it. .
Cahn’s painting has been mired in French news cycles for two months. In March, a group of six conservative organizations led by the Association Juristes Pour L’Enfance filed a complaint against the Palais de Tokyo. They alleged that by showing the artwork, the museum violated French law against the exhibition of pornographic depictions of minors.
But an administrative judge quickly threw the case judging that Cahn’s painting refers to crimes committed in Bucha, Ukraine, and “cannot be understood out of context”.
Four of the plaintiffs subsequently appealed the decision of the Council of State of Frances, but this case was also dismissed .
The debate over Cahn’s painting, fueled in large part by far-right media personalities on TV and online, has prompted statements from some of France’s most prominent government officials, including Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak and President Emmanuel Macron.
“Tackling a work is attacking our values” Macron wrote on Twitter after the paint bomb attack. “In France, art is always free and respect for cultural creation is guaranteed.”
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