I'd give $500,000 to anyone who could identify the "vandalism" on a first viewing of the piece.

I kept looking at the before and after pictures trying to find what changed, couldn't. It doesn't help that one is cropped compared to the other.

Three green blotches, centered vertically, slightly right of center horizontally.

I read an article that clearly depicted the changes.

At least they were in line more or less with the overall imagery. They could have painted a huge line drawing of a dick over all of it.

It was an accident waiting to happen.

Just because someone said it's worth half a million doesn't mean it really is.

Most art, especially modern art, is artificially inflated in value to serve as collateral for rich people loans.
Only vaguely sure about that.

I think they improved it. They should get a cut of the sale price.

My shenanigans senses are tingling.

So is it worthless now? It's not substantially different than it was before. Is that value derived from the art itself or from the name of the artist who made it?

If the artist just initials the changes, it should be all good.

It's now gotten international fame. Maybe that's how they based the price.

So this was all a publicity stunt to raise the price of the work and make the artist rich. Brilliant.

I dunno. It can't be good press for the artist that any schmo can do his work.