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Thomas Gainsborough 1727 - 1788 Mr and Mrs William Hallett ('The Morning Walk') 1785. © The National Gallery, London
There are thousands of reasons for wanting to stab a painting. Maybe you’re a religious fanatic and the imagery is blasphemous. Maybe you’re a conservative prude and the painting contains a few nipples. Maybe you really, really hate ruffs. Maybe you just really despise Damien Hirst with every fibre of your vicious, angry, suffocatingly misanthropic being. Maybe you think ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ by Frans Hals is laughing at you and you’ve had enough and you’re going to give him something to bloody laugh about, the ruff-wearing shithead.
It’s hard to see why you’d want to stab Thomas Gainsborough’s ‘The Morning Walk’. Twice. Which is what happened at The National Gallery last Saturday, at 2.15pm. The gallery was evacuated but reopened two hours later, while a man called Keith Gregory was arrested and charged with criminal damage.
I mean, sure, the two walkers in the painting have powerfully slappable faces, and yes, their smugness could – potentially – fill you with loathing, but to actually stab it? Surely there are better art targets in London. Go stab a Banksy.
Please. I beg you.
Want suggestions for more art to deface? Have a look here then, jeez.
In other art news, the winners of the Fourth Plinth commission have just been announced.