Picture your very first day at a new job. You want to make a good impression, stay awake, and get through the shift without breaking anything. Now meet Aleksandr Vasiliev.
In December 2021, the 63-year-old decorated military veteran started his first shift as a contract security guard at the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The museum was hosting a high-profile modern wall art exhibit titled The World as Non-Objectivity, featuring priceless 1930s works on loan from the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
Among them was Three Figures, painted between 1932 and 1934 by Anna Leporskaya, a prominent student of Kazimir Malevich. Like much of the Soviet Suprematist art of that era, the composition featured three stylized, torso-like human figures across the canvas art piece, each with smooth, completely faceless heads. The painting was insured for 75 million rubles, roughly $1 million.
Hours into his shift, Vasiliev got painfully bored. Standing alone in the quiet hall, he watched visitors pass by.
According to Vasiliev's court statements, a group of teenagers stood in front of the canvas and began giggling. They pointed at the blank heads and asked why the figures did not have eyes. They handed him a pen and dared him to draw them on, claiming it was an interactive kids' display.
Believing the canvas was just a draft or a children's drawing exercise, Vasiliev pulled out a Yeltsin Center-branded ballpoint pen from his pocket. He leaned in and carefully sketched two pairs of tiny dot eyes onto two of the faceless figures.
Two gallery visitors noticed the fresh ballpoint marks later that afternoon and alerted museum staff. The Yeltsin Center immediately pulled the painting from display and shipped it back to Moscow under police escort.
Fortunately, Vasiliev had not pressed hard with the pen. Lead conservator Ivan Petrov at the Tretyakov Gallery carefully dissolved the ballpoint ink without damaging the underlying 1930s oil paint. The restoration cost 250,000 rubles (around $3,300), which was fully covered by insurance.
The legal aftermath was less smooth. Police initially refused to open a criminal investigation, writing off the ink marks as minor damage. But Russia's Culture Ministry stepped in, insisting on prosecution. In court, Vasiliev's record as a decorated veteran who suffered traumatic brain injury in combat was weighed alongside his complete lack of malicious intent. In August 2022, the court sentenced him to 180 hours of compulsory labor and court-ordered psychiatric evaluation.
It remains one of the most famous first-day security blunders in museum history. And for anyone looking at abstract art prints today, it is a reminder that faceless figures are meant to stay that way.
0 comments