For years after he did it, people would argue over whether he understood the consequences of his act. Some argued it was a lack of education that had caused it - that he simply didn’t understand the gravity of the institutions he had betrayed. Others, on the contrary, heralded him as the brave soul who had dared bring down the establishment, a revolutionary of some sort, the icon of a generation. But when I met him, 10 years later, in the little Spanish villa he had somehow managed to argue out of his plea deal, he shook his head at my questions. He couldn’t even remember why he’d done it, he said. He had looked at that painting all those years ago and an urge, something he hadn’t thought he would feel, took over him and drove him to it. In a way it was barely him who had done it, he told me: it had been some primal part of him which had forgotten all social conventions and pushed him against the canvas. But in a way, he continued irritably, was it really such a big deal? First of all, art was supposed to make you feel. So what if this particular man had felt this particular urge when looking at that particular painting? Shouldn’t the artist, in some way, have questioned what might have provoked that primal sentiment within him? Hell, he would go even further than that: if he, a reasonable old man, could be driven to it, what would younger, hotter-blooded specimens do? Besides, he added, what was so wrong about a little lick? People touched paintings all the time - sure, his was maybe more deliberate than others’, and what was excused of a 5 year old child perhaps shouldn’t be of a man his age. But who had tried to warn him? This second line of argument was one I knew well: it was the one his lawyer had used all those years ago. A young reporter at that time, I remember sitting in a hushed courtroom as the theatrics of the trial unfolded. His client, the lawyer argued, was not so well versed in art conventions. When he had seen that the Beyeler Foundation was calling for art to be democratised, he had taken the phrase a little bit too close to heart. And who could blame him, when there were no apparent restrictions, not even a line drawn in front of the painting to signify one shouldn’t come too close? It was a tough act to follow, not least because it called into question the very way in which people treated art pieces, and indeed expected even those who did not belong to that world to behave. You can understand now the intellectual fury his acts wrought on the artistic community. Some more avant-garde artists set up interactive pieces: in response to the lick they asked passers-by to slap their work, to step on it, others to hug or kiss it. One even went so far as to suggest viewers could defecate on his piece, to the dismay of the Maeght foundation which hosted it. In turn of course, galleries and museums started arguing with artists: who had the right to determine whether a piece could be interacted with, especially after it had been bought? Private collectors balked at the requests some made to have their work sat on, walked on, peed on (and understandably so). The debate peaked when Marina Abramovic stormed a Christie’s auction stage and, in the name of performance art, shot at a Joseph Beuys sculpture. Whilst some were quick to dismiss her act as a publicity stunt, her actions had resounding consequences in the courtroom: our licker had opened the floodgates to the defamation of art, and soon vandals, gangs and petty criminals would take over from performance artists and debase every remaining piece of art. The licked became something of a celebrity: artists and critics alike came to visit him in the commissariat where he was being held on bail. In London, the Institute of Contemporary Arts organised a conference on Art and Touch for which he was videoconferenced in from his cell. Claiming to represent him, con-artists raised funds for his legal defence which he never touched and some new curators claimed to get their inspiration for new shows directly from him (he had never so much as heard their name). In the middle of this frenzy, the accused sat in a little cell in Madrid, facing the bemused stare of his improvised companions de fortune and awaiting trial. He later told me his greatest preoccupation at the time was to weigh out whether the lick had been worth it: he spent three months in jail awaiting verdict and was risking another 7 in prison if he couldn’t pay the extortionate amount that Manet painting was supposedly worth (who knew art could cost such a price?). Ultimately, some high-up lawyer with an interest in art offered to argue his case for free, in the name of philosophy. That was our man’s saving grace: with incredible wit, the eccentric attorney debunked every unspoken rule of the art world, ruffled the feathers of all (including those who had argued in favour of the lick) and portrayed the offender as a victim of assumed convention. He was released with compensation, although most museums banned him from ever entering - it was an odd phenomenon, he thought, that the very institutions meant to allow public interaction with art would set such boundaries. “Was it worth it?” I asked him, thinking about the despair I would no doubt feel at being so publicly shunned. “Every bit of it. In a sense, licking that asparagus was the closest I would ever have come to artistic osmosis. So what if all the museums fear me? None of the curators, none of the collectors will ever know the pleasure of doing something so forbidden that it goes beyond the conceivable. For the few seconds where my tongue was on the Manet, I was absolutely free - and I have lived after this experience like a man touched by the hand of god, knowing that for all its anger, the art world is dying of jealousy.”