Art Vandals 1: Ivan the Terrible & His Son Ivan
Weapon: Metal pole (2018) / Knife (1913)
Reason: Politics (2018) / Aesthetics (1913)
Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan by Ilya Repin (1883-1885)
The full title is: Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581. It was painted by the Russian Realist painter Ilya Repin between 1883 and 1885. It shows grief-stricken Russian ruler (first Tsar of Russia) Ivan the Terrible cradling his fatally wounded son, Ivan Ivanovich. The father dealt the fatal blow to his son in a fit of rage. It is considered one of Russia’s most famous paintings. It resides in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
It has been vandalised twice – first in 1913 and again in May last year.
25 May 2018
Igor Podporin (37) attacked it with a metal pole, smashing the security glass around the painting. It was one of the security poles used to hold the rope to keep visitors at a distance. He told police he attacked it after drinking vodka. In court he added that he had done it because the painting was “a lie”. Some Russian nationalists believe Ivan the Terrible was not so terrible and his name has been blackened unfairly. (Russian leader depicted as murderous – who’d have thought?)
The canvas was torn in three places though luckily not near the faces and hands of the two characters. The artist had used a heavy canvas so the painting was able to withstand the attack relatively well. The damage was still “serious” and a special group of art experts have been charged with planning and executing the restoration, which is expected to take several years. They have Repin’s notes from the first attack which may help with restoration work.
16 January 1913
Abram Abramovich Balachov attacked the painting with a knife, making three parallel slashes above the faces of the two characters. The then director of the Tretyakov Gallery, Ilya Ostroukhov, resigned. The curator of the Gallery, the landscape painter Georgy Khruslov, was so upset about the attack that he threw himself under a train.
Repin returned to Moscow from Finland to restore the work. Repin thought the attack motivated by extreme dislike of his adopted artistic style which some considered very old-fashioned. He suspected the attack was “the result of that monstrous conspiracy against the classic and academic monuments of art which is daily gathering momentum”.
Balachov’s vandalism was applauded by Symbolist poet Maximilian Voloshin, who published an essay On the significance of the catastrophe that befell Repin’s painting and lectured on the subject, sponsored by Futurists at the Moscow Polytechnic Museum. Repin himself was in the audience and came up to the podium to respond.
At the time of the attack Balashov was removed from the scene shouting: “Enough blood! Down with blood!”
Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan by Ilya Repin (1883 – 1885)
The three slashes of 1913
The pole marks of 2018
Simple Pleasures part 4 
Addendum: Balashev was 29, an iconographer (which I take as painter of religious icons). He was found to be mentally ill and restricted to a psychiatric hospital. The painting was restored by two leading Russian experts within a week – the work was greatly assisted by the availability of good-quality photographs of the painting.
[…] recently heard, in connection with my Art Vandals project, about the occasion when the French Impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard in his later years […]