Untitled (Season 10, Episode 20)
Premise: The killing of a wealthy patron of transgressive art leads to a failed painter who claims a violent canvas she backed pushed him over the edge, and McCoy refuses to let the defense put art on trial.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 10, Episode 20
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Abbie Carmichael (Angie Harmon), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Bruce MacVittie as Larry Brunig, Steven Ogg as Mark Vee, David Thornton as Paul Radford, Spencer Garrett as defense attorney Stephen Olson, J. K. Simmons as Dr. Emil Skoda
- Director
- Jace Alexander
- Writers
- Story: Richard Sweren; Story & teleplay: Barry M. Schkolnick
Summary
The Investigation
“Untitled” opens with the murder of art patron Lucy Young, discovered after her blood seeps into the loft below. She was knocked out with a hard-edged object, her mouth taped, and both hands cut off with her own kitchen knife; her rings were left behind. A bloody print on the coffee table looks like a gun’s grip, and pepper spray lies inside the building door. A neighbor recalls a man buzzing for Lucy, and a passerby saw a man waiting on a loading dock with a view of her door.
Lucy’s records show $100,000 in cash paid to dealer Paul Radford, who admits it was a secret fee for exhibiting an artist she backed. At his gallery the detectives find Mark Vee’s painting Perfect Woman #3, a woman with no hands and no mouth; Lucy was quietly funding Vee. Vee’s alibi holds, but the reporter who vouches for him remembers a man thrown out of the opening for haranguing guests, who complained about a long ride on the L train.
A pharmacy in Canarsie identifies Larry Brunig, an insurance proofreader, and the reporter picks his photo. After Carmichael wins a court fight with a newspaper, it turns over his unpublished letter attacking Vee’s backers in menacing terms. A search turns up a gun with a waffle-pattern grip, and Brunig is arrested. The detectives learn he once painted seriously before slashing his canvases, and that in Barcelona he was detained for trying to spray-paint a Salvador Dalí painting of a woman without head, hands or feet.
The Trial
Brunig is charged with first-degree murder, and the judge admits the Barcelona incident with a limiting instruction. Defense attorney Stephen Olson pleads extreme emotional disturbance, arguing the painting provoked him. A gallery worker says Brunig returned four times and stood calmly before the canvas, and Vee testifies that he wants his work to provoke. Olson objects to Dr. Skoda watching from the gallery, and Skoda later tells McCoy that Brunig’s account suggests a genuine loss of control.
Brunig testifies that he only wanted to confront Lucy, then describes forcing her inside at gunpoint, striking her and fetching a knife. McCoy stresses the gun he brought, the long wait and the cleanup, and paints him as a bitter failed artist. Schiff urges a plea to second-degree murder, but McCoy refuses, arguing that conceding would tell future defendants that art can excuse violence.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Brunig of first-degree murder. Afterward the prosecutors remark that free expression has survived for now, and one wonders whether Brunig would have killed had he kept painting.
Why it stands out
- An art dealer cites the Brooklyn Museum’s “Sensation” exhibition and collector Charles Saatchi’s backing of it to defend paid placements.
- McCoy turns down a plea specifically to avoid conceding that a work of art can excuse murder.
- Dr. Emil Skoda’s mere presence in the courtroom sparks a defense objection that he is there to intimidate the defendant.