After Vladimir Umanetsc claimed his defacing of the Mark Rothko painting in the Tate as part of his Yellowism movement he certainly made sure the whole world knew it was him that started it.

If someone wanted to create a great marketing stunt (with the small repercussion that you could go to prison) then this is it.

But what is Yellowism? Vladimir wrote on the painting ’Vladimir Umanets, A Potential Piece of Yellowism.’ Yellowism, it seems is a little like the Appropriation movement that we wrote about in our last issue yet more vague and taken to a whole new level. Vladimir certainly seems to want to take Yellowism both a step further and be the father of something new.

He describes his movement as ’neither art, nor anti-art’ which doesn’t really help matters in getting to the root of what the movement actually is. The other founder of Yellowism is Marcin Lodyga who adds that  ’Examples of Yellowism can look like works of art, but are not works of art’ even clearer then…

There is actually a website dedicated to Yellowism that doesn’t go much further by way of explanation. It seems to be safe to assume that everything and anything is and could be Yellowism which is pretty handy for the founders.

On the website with regards to the defacing of the Rothko painting the Yellowism founders have commented :

“This action informs the contemporary world, that Rothko’s painting can stop to be a work of art and can become a piece of Yellowism  -  If  Rothko’s painting was placed in a yellowistic chamber then it would  not be a work of art anymore and would express yellow color only; it would be a definition of yellow given in a form of Rothko’s  painting.”

We’re really sorry guys but it just sounds like a awful load of old bollocks to get a load of media attention.

But what do you lot think?