1 of 2. Vincent Pomarede, curator of painting department at the Louvre Lens Museum, poses front of Eugene Delacroix 's painting, ''Liberty Leading the People (28 July 1830) (La Liberte guidant le peuple) in ''La Galerie du Temps'' (Gallery of Time) during a media day on the eve of the inauguration of the Le Louvre Lens Museum, in Lens, northern France, in this December 3, 2012 file photo.

PARIS | Fri Feb 8, 2013 12:04pm EST

PARIS (Reuters) - A woman has defaced Eugene Delacroix's painting "Liberty Leading the People" with a black marker as it hung in an outpost of the Louvre gallery in northern France.

Police arrested a 28-year-old woman on Thursday for writing "AE911" across the bottom of a painting so closely identified with the French Republic that its image once graced the 100-franc note and it has been reproduced on postage stamps.

Painted in 1830, the work was on loan from the main Louvre in Paris to the new Louvre-Lens gallery in northern France inaugurated last December by President Francois Hollande.

"AE911Truth" is the name of a website called "Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth" whose backers say they are seeking to establish the truth of the September 11, 2001 suicide airliner attacks on New York's Twin Towers.

"It had really become an icon, a sort of symbol of the Republic which has remained famous throughout the ages," said Vincent Pomarede, head of the Louvre's painting department.

"We have a very passionate relationship with all our paintings and when something like this happens it's really hard to handle," he said.

Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People" was painted after the 1830 July Revolution as a symbol of reconciliation following the overthrow of Bourbon King Charles X and the ascent to the throne of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orleans.

The work, depicting a bare-breasted woman brandishing a tricolor flag and leading her people over the bodies of the fallen, was later adopted as a revolutionary emblem in the 1848 uprising which overthrew the Orleans monarchy.

It subsequently disappeared from public view before resurfacing in the Louvre after the advent of the Third Republic in 1871, after which its place in the French national consciousness was sealed.

The Louvre confirmed on Friday it had managed to save the painting as the black marker had not penetrated the upper layer of varnish and has been successfully removed.

Opened in December, the 150 million euro ($195 million) art center in Lens houses temporary exhibitions as well as a rotating collection of works from the Louvre museum in Paris.

It was conceived in an effort to regenerate a dreary northern region of France, once known for its mining industry, but now in economic decline.

While the Louvre in Paris looks out onto manicured lawns and flowerbeds of the Tuileries Gardens, Louvre-Lens sits on a disused coalmine and offers views onto slag heaps and a stadium housing the local football club.

(Additional reporting By Pierre Savary; Editing by Brian Love and Paul Casciato)

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LONDON | Mon Oct 8, 2012 7:12pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - A man was arrested on Monday on suspicion of defacing a painting by the Russian-American artist Mark Rothko in London's Tate Modern museum.

The 26-year-old was detained at about 9 p.m. in connection with a case of criminal damage, London's Metropolitan Police said.

The words "Vladimir Umanets, a potential piece of yellowism" were daubed in black onto the bottom-right corner of the painting, "Black on Maroon", on Sunday.

The popular gallery, located in a converted brick power station on the River Thames, issued a statement confirming that "a visitor defaced one of Rothko's Seagram murals by applying a small area of black paint with a brush".

Rothko, a key figure in 20th century abstract painting whose works sell at auction for tens of millions of dollars, was commissioned to paint the Seagram Murals in the 1950s for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York.

Several of them ended up in the Tate collection after being given as gifts, and Tate describes the series of soft-edged, colored rectangles as "iconic".

Tim Wright wrote on the Twitter micro-blogging site that he had witnessed the incident and posted a photograph of the damaged canvas online.

"Very bizarre, he sat there for a while then just went for it and made a quick exit," Wright wrote. "This guy calmly walked up, took out a marker pen and tagged it. Surreal."

In May, Rothko's "Orange, Red, Yellow" sold for $86.9 million, a new auction record for the artist, at Christie's in New York.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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A gallery worker walks past Seagram murals by Russian-born American painter Mark Rothko during a media view of the first major exhibition dedicated to his late works at the Tate Modern in London September 24, 2008.

LONDON | Mon Oct 8, 2012 7:13am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - A man who claims to have defaced a major painting by Mark Rothko over the weekend in London said on Monday that Marcel Duchamp, the French artist most famous for his 1917 urinal that shocked the art establishment, would be "happy" at what he had done.

Police are investigating the incident on Sunday at Tate Modern gallery on the River Thames, where witnesses saw a man approach Rothko's 1958 canvas "Black on Maroon" and inscribe it with black ink in the lower right-hand corner.

Although the ink had run down the canvas, a photograph posted by a witness on the Twitter website showed the words: "VLADIMIR UMANETS '12, A POTENTIAL PIECE OF YELLOWISM."

A man answering a mobile phone number provided via a link on the website of the "Yellowism" movement (www.thisisyellowism.com) answered to the name of Vladimir Umanets and told Reuters he had carried out the attack.

"I'm aware they (the police) will come at some point and arrest me," he said, speaking in an eastern European accent.

"It was an artistic statement, but it was more about having the opportunity to speak about galleries and art," he added, explaining his actions.

"Marcel Duchamp, when he made 'readymades' (art), everyone was shocked. I don't want to be considered a vandal or someone who wants to destroy something, especially such a valuable painting.

"It's more about to change perception of things, of spectators. It's more about an idea."

Duchamp's iconoclastic urinal, entitled "Fountain" and featuring the words "R.Mutt", is considered one of the most influential works of the 20th century by challenging people's understanding of what constitutes art.

"What I do believe is the most creative thing left to do in contemporary art today is to abandon this (art) and Marcel Duchamp was trying to do this," Umanets said.

"I'm not saying I'm another Marcel Duchamp. I'm not a tag-maker. I'm doing my own thing ... After Duchamp, nothing actually happened. I definitely believe that Marcel Duchamp would be really happy."

In its online manifesto, "Yellowism" is described as neither art nor anti-art and that the "context for works of art is already art".

The Metropolitan Police said the suspect was a white man believed to be in his late-20s. No arrest has been made.

A Tate Modern spokeswoman said the painting would be repaired by an in-house team of experts. Asked whether the gallery, one of the world's most popular, was considering beefing up its security, she replied in a statement:

"Tate has strong security systems in place including physical barriers, security officers in the galleries, alarms and CCTV."

In the case of the Rothkos, which are hanging on Level 3 of the converted power station, the barrier is a low wire.

The damaged work was one of the "Seagram Murals" the Russian-American artist was commissioned to paint in the 1950s for the new Four Seasons restaurant in New York.

Several ended up in the Tate collection after they were given as gifts before Rothko took his life, and Tate describes the famous series of soft-edged rectangles as "iconic".

No one knows why the artist abandoned the bright, intense colors of his earlier canvases and painted in dark maroons, reds and black, but one theory is that he said he wanted to "ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room."

Rothko is considered one of the 20th century's most important artists, and in May, his "Orange, Red, Yellow" sold for $86.9 million, a new auction record for the artist, at Christie's in New York.

Tim Wright, who witnessed Sunday's attack, wrote on Twitter: "This guy calmly walked up, took out a marker pen and tagged it. Surreal ... Very bizarre, he sat there for a while then just went for it and made a quick exit."

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White)

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