Doodling is certainly fun, relaxing, and therapeutic. Most of us end up doodling something random to pass the time. However that doesn’t cost us a fortune, does it? Well, but who might have thought something as simple as doodling can put you in trouble. A security officer at a Russian gallery was charged with vandalism. He drew two sets of googly eyes on a Soviet-era painting worth around $1 million.
On his first day of job at an exhibition at the Boris Yeltsin Center in Ekaterinburg, Russia, the guard was charged with disfiguring the painting. Art Newspaper Russia, a Russian news publication, was the first to report on the incident. The “Three Figures” painting is a piece of art from the 1930s by Soviet artist Anna Leporskaya. On December 7, visitors to the exhibition contracted faculty after catching two pairs of “crudely-rendered eyes” drawn on the painting.
Unknown motives
“His motives are still unknown. However, the administration suspects it was some kind of a lapse of insanity,” exhibition curator Anna Reshetkina told the Art Newspaper.
She went on to explain that he used one of the Yeltsin Center’s own branded pens to doodle the eyeballs on the painting, through a layer of paint. Fortunately, the perpetrator did not apply excessive pressure to the canvas with the pen, restricting the magnitude of the deterioration.
The guard was expelled by the museum. Later on, the event was under investigation by the cops. According to the BBC, if convicted of the guilt, the guard may face a penalty or a punishment of up to three months in jail. The picture was back for repair at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. They had given it to the Yeltsin gallery. 250,000 roubles could be the cost for the repair process.