Rothko Painting at Tate Modern Defaced

A mural painted by the late artist Mark Rothko was defaced earlier today. The vandal, according to a blogger quoted in a BBC report on the incident, used "a marker pen" to scribble some words in a corner of the piece.

The Rothko work was one of the so-called Seagram murals, originally prepared for display in New York's Four Seasons Restaurant. They were never installed there.

Episodes in the last half-century, as a separate BBC report notes, have spotlighted how vulnerable art works are to vandalism. The article does not mention the deliberate destruction of the world's artistic heritage over the past decades, with the Taliban's elimination of centuries-old monumental Buddhist sculpture among the more recent outrages. The BBC piece focused on acts of individual insanity, rather than state-supported lunacy.