Three individuals targeted National Gallery paintings an hour after Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were jailed for similar attack in 2022

Climate activists have thrown tomato soup over two Sunflowers paintings by Vincent van Gogh, just an hour after two others were jailed for a similar protest action in 2022.

Three supporters of Just Stop Oil walked into the National Gallery in London, where an exhibition of Van Gogh’s collected works is on display, at 2.30pm on Friday afternoon, and threw Heinz soup over Sunflowers 1889 and Sunflowers 1888.

The latter was the same work targeted by Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland in 2022. That pair are now among 25 supporters of Just Stop Oil in jail for climate protests.

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2 points

I’m confused who this is for. Even many who agree with them don’t appreciate vandalism of art and art galleries.

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12 points

Will art matter when we’re all dead from climate change tho?? I guess everyone has their priorities

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-1 points

So people can go randomly punch the homeless? It won’t matter in the end if we are all dead due to climate change.

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7 points

You think I’m ok with harming humans because I don’t care if art got ruined?? What?? The fuck

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-1 points

Will art matter when we’re all dead from climate change tho?? I guess everyone has their priorities

Jesus Christ.

Yes. You got it. Climate crisis averted because some twits threw soup on a priceless painting and damaged the frame. Now we are all aware, whereas we weren’t before.

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7 points

respectfully disagree. its way too easy to normalize every disaster, every lie, every little “we’re all going to die anyway”.

I may be a sick minded outlier, but I am ok with this action and others. there is no damage done (soup on glass and cornflour on rock don’t count) and these people are putting their bodies and freedom on the line to keep people talking about what is likely the single biggest existential risk humanity has faced.in 50k years.

right now, any time this issue is in front of eyeballs (even if tangentially reported) its a win.

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4 points

I guess you feel like climate change is being tackled seriously and with great haste then. You’re right, calling more extreme attention to this issue is a waste of time, we’re gonna meet the 1.5C limit ez pz lemon squeezey. Shiiiet, you really helped me stop giving a fuck about this issue, whew.

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-2 points

Will art matter when we’re all dead from climate change tho?? I guess everyone has their priorities

I believe these antics hurt the advocacy for taking climate change seriously. Their vandalism protests confirm in the minds of the opposition that “climate change is fake because the ‘soup throwers’ are the ones driving it.”.

Its similar to how vegans are dismissed not for their choices in diet but because of how they advocate others to do the same. People that want to go vegan have to do so in spite of the perception the most vocal vegans have created. Instead of accelerating adoption it creates a new barrier. Note, I’m not a vegan. See, I have to say that so I’m taken seriously in this response. That is how bad public perception of veganism is because of its most vocal advocates.

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-3 points

Everyone dying from climate change is not what climate scientists are predicting. Lying about reality will not help the cause.

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4 points

The fuck? Yes it is. Unable to grow food? Unable to survive extreme weather and weather events?? Where are you getting your climate change info from, faux news??

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10 points

It’s to get cameras thrust in their face so they ask when oil executives will face consequences.

“Is destroying art worse than destroying the whole planet???”

It’s an idiotic form of protest, it accomplishes nothing but turning the public against you, and forever associating your cause with petty vandalism.

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16 points

Except when they did protests targeted at oil infrastructure, that was still apparently wrong and got far less coverage than much safer stunts like these.

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7 points

“Is destroying art worse than destroying the whole planet???”

It’s a fair question.

Everyone cares so much about protecting this painting. Why don’t they care as much about protecting the planet? (And the painting isn’t even in any real danger. It’s behind glass.)

The vandalism is practically thought-provoking performance art in itself. It’s probably one of the best pieces in the gallery.

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-1 points

The vandalism is practically thought-provoking performance art in itself. It’s probably one of the best pieces in the gallery.

Jesus fucking Christ.

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2 points

…and yet, here we are talking about climate change. If they’d instead organized a protest of 10,000 people marching for hours it wouldn’t have been international news and we wouldn’t be talking about climate change.

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1 point

10 thousand people marching would make world headlines. Though admittedly that’s more difficult than smuggling soup in to an art gallery.

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1 point

And also everything they do is wrong because all protests are secretly worse than the things being protested.

Let the planet die like all the reasonable people.

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-3 points

They should throw (cold) soup on the children of oil company executives.

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0 points

I don’t know how many times I need to say this. THAT IS ASSAULT. In most countries that is years of prison. Soup on a Plexiglas barrier is, at most, a few days for disturbing the peace and vandalizing protective equipment. What doesn’t make sense about this to you?

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-2 points

Getting a couple of ounces of soup on a picture frame is hardly the “vandalism of art” people are making it out to be.

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