Now, soup thrown at van Gogh’s Sunflowers: Why are climate activists targeting art?

 The latest instance of climate activists targeting famous works of art occurred on Friday when members of the Just Stop Oil movement threw tomato soup on Vincent van Gogh’s famed work Sunflowers and then glued themselves to the wall under the painting.

London’s National Gallery said the protesters’ attack on the painting caused “minor damage to the frame but the painting is unharmed”.

Just Stop Oil’s members previously glued themselves to the frame of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, and to John Constable’s The Hay Wain in the National Gallery.

Just Stop Oil has stated that its goal is to end UK government involvement in oil and gas.

Let’s take a look at what happened and why climate activists are attacking art:

What happened?

The National Gallery said the two protesters “appeared to glue themselves to the wall adjacent to van Gogh’s Sunflowers and threw a “red substance” at the painting. The room was cleared of visitors and police called, it added.

A video posted on Twitter by the Guardian newspaper’s environment correspondent Damien Gayle and retweeted by the eco-activism group shows two women wearing T-shirts with the slogan “Just Stop Oil” lobbing cans of soup at the iconic painting.

Anna Holland, from Newcastle, who accompanied her asked, “Is it worth more than food? More than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?

“The cost of living crisis is part of the cost of oil crisis, fuel is unaffordable to millions of cold, hungry families. They can’t even afford to heat a tin of soup,” she added.

In the video, someone can be heard yelling “oh my God” as the soup hits the canvas, and another person shouts “Security?” while soup drips from the frame onto the floor.

London’s Metropolitan Police said officers arrested two people on suspicion of criminal damage and aggravated trespass.

“Specialist officers have now un-glued them and they have been taken into custody to a central London police station,” the force said in a statement.

Why are they doing this?

Publicity.

A spokesperson from Just Stop Oil told The New York Times that when they invaded oil terminals no one paid attention, but news that they’d superglued their hands to the frame of van Gogh’s Peach Trees in Blossom went global.

Just Stop Oil in a statement its activists threw two cans of Heinz Tomato soup over the painting to demand the UK government halt all new oil and gas projects.

It later tweeted that the protest’s message was “Choose life over art”.

“Human creativity and brilliance is on show in this gallery, yet our heritage is being destroyed by our Government’s failure to act on the climate and cost of living crisis,” the group said.

The activist group said the painting has an estimated value of $84.2 million.

The National Gallery on its website says the signed painting from 1888 was acquired by the gallery in 1924.

It is one of five versions of “Sunflowers” on public display in museums and galleries across the world. van Gogh created seven in total.

Vincent Van Gogh’s famous sunflowers painting

Just Stop Oil has previously targeted several other famous paintings with glue attacks.

In June, two activists glued their hands to the frame of van Gogh’s painting Peach Trees in Blossom at the Courtauld Gallery in London.

In July, supporters glued their hands to the frame of British painter John Constable’s The Hay Wain at the National Gallery.

They first taped over the canvas with a “reimagined version” of the bucolic scene, showing the landscape covered in pollution, dotted with wildfires and overflown by aircraft.

In the same month, they glued themselves to a full-scale copy of Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London.

The protests comes after the British government opened a new licensing round for North Sea oil and gas exploration, despite criticism from environmentalists and scientists who say the move undermines the country’s commitment to fighting climate change.

The latest attack came a week after Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman issued a threat to direct-action protesters who she said were using “guerrilla tactics” to bring “chaos and misery” to the public.

“Whether you’re Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain or Extinction Rebellion, you cross a line when you break the law — and that’s why we’ll keep putting you behind bars,” she said.

Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said of the protests that he was “frustrated so many officers are being taken away from tackling issues that matter most to communities.”

Wider international movement

Just Stop Oil isn’t alone, but part of a larger international movement that seems to targeting famous works of art.

In August, members of the group Uprising of the Last Generation glued themselves to the 1504 painting Rest on the Flight into Egypt by the Lucas Cranach the Elder at Berlin’s Gemaeldegalerie.

As per Forbes, the group targeted Botticelli’s Primavera, which features 500 plant species, to highlight loss of biodiversity.

Members of the group also entered the Vatican Museum and secured themselves to Laocoön and His Sons, a 2,000-year-old Roman statue depicting a priest who urged his people to burn the Trojan Horse as it entered Troy but was ignored.

“We must immediately understand that there will be no art in a collapsing planet,” a protester told Forbes. “This is why we ask cultural institutions to take sides with us and to put pressure on the government.”

With their unusual forms of protest, Last Generation members say they are trying to make it impossible for people and governments to ignore that the world has only a short time to prevent catastrophic levels of global warming.

That protest came a day after activists glued themselves to Nicolas Poussinthe’s 1651 painting Landscape during a Thunderstorm with Pyramus and Thisbe at the Staedel Museum in Frankfurt.

Two activists also glued their hands to the golden frame of Raffael’s Sistine Madonna at the Gemaeldegalerie museum in Dresden. In both cases, police were called to the museums to carefully detach the activists’ hands from the frames.

“Climate catastrophe is an unprecedented threat of incredible proportions: killer droughts, devastating heat, all-consuming forest fires. These will increase dramatically in the coming years. Not just here in Germany … but worldwide,” said Jakob Beyer, a 28-year-old activist who glued himself to the frame of Sistine Madonna, one of the most famous paintings of the Italian Renaissance.

In Italy, protesters glued themselves to one of the Vatican Museums’ most important ancient sculptures. Activists earlier glued their hands to the glass window protecting Sandro Botticelli’s painting Spring in the Uffizi Galleries in Florence. In that case, they were detained and ordered to stay out of Florence for three years, Italian media said.

In May, the iconic Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci fell prey to vandalism as a man claiming to be a climate activist smeared cake all over the bulletproof protecting the painting.

The famous Mona Lisa painting. AP

As per a report in Marca, the person involved was a man in a wheelchair who wore a wig. He suddenly jumped up from the wheelchair and threw cake on the iconic painting.

The man disguised as a woman even attempted to break through the bulletproof glass that protected Leonardo da Vinci’s work in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

What do experts say?

Sociologist and activism expert Dr Justine Lloyd, speaking to Sydney Morning Herald, said these incidents are occurring in the backdrop of  anti-protest laws targeting the climate movement growing harsher and as protesters search for avenues for action with “less punitive” consequences.

“Extinction Rebellion and groups like Blockade Australia have been increasingly prevented from traditional forms of protests like street protests and the blocking of the traffic,” Lloyd said.

“If Picasso was alive, I think he would have been painting pictures about climate, the climate emergency and about the kind of involvement of the fossil fuels industries and their connections to war,” she added.

The German Cultural Council, an umbrella group for cultural organisations, accused activists of endangering important artworks with their tactics and warned them not to pit art against the cause of curbing global warming.

“As much as I can understand the despair of the climate activists, I say clearly that the act of gluing themselves to the frames of famous works of art is clearly wrong. The risk of damaging the artworks is very high,” said Olaf Zimmermann, the German Cultural Council’s managing director.

“The works put in danger are part of world cultural heritage and deserve to be protected as well as our climate,” he added.

Surrealist Australian painter Reg Mombassa told Sydney Morning Herald he “wouldn’t be keen on people destroying artworks” but he does admire the work of activists as climate change “accelerates alarmingly”.

“It’s often quite risky and stressful for them,” he says. “I’m not sure whether it changes anyone’s mind who doesn’t believe there’s a problem with the climate. I guess it gees up people who are concerned about it.”

With inputs from agencies

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