Hawk & Squawk

In Tacoma's Art League Gallery, a gaunt, bearded man stared hard at a Morris Graves watercolor called Hawk, then furiously snatched it from the wall and smashed the glass against a radiator. The gallery attendant ran out of her office just in time to see him tear the painting out of the shattered frame and deliberately rip it in two. "An absolutely shocking, disgusting fake," snapped the destroyer: Painter Morris Graves.

Graves was undeterred by the fact that the painting belonged to Collector Manfred Selig, a dry-goods merchant who has made a specialty of collecting Northwestern artists since he emigrated to the U.S. from Germany in 1940. The alleged Graves was a recent acquisition (price: $200), had been lent to the gallery as part of a show of his collection. Before stalking out of the gallery and heading back to Ireland (where he now lives), Graves scribbled a note to Selig: "I'm outraged that these fake 'Graves' paintings are getting into good collections such as yours and onto the New York market. I destroyed this one."

One critic deplored Graves's "childish tantrum," and another pointed out that "if all artists were to be permitted to destroy fakes or what they consider to be fakes, wherever they find them, all collections would be in jeopardy." A quipster proposed that Selig hang the damaged painting with the label: "Latest work of Morris Graves." But Collector Selig himself was relaxed, wrote Graves a letter: "Your anger was justifiable. I would prefer to leave payment or the choice of replacement of the damaged picture to you. Whatever you decide will be fine with me."

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