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.
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.
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.
“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.
…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.
10 thousand people marching would make world headlines. Though admittedly that’s more difficult than smuggling soup in to an art gallery.
10 thousand people marching would make world headlines.
No, it wouldn’t. Protest is totally normalized now, it’s just a pressure release valve that helps keep the status quo running.
Here is a protest that happened today - https://cloudisland.nz/@simplicitarian/113212289035494255
Apparently it involved between 20,000 to 30,000 people - https://cloudisland.nz/@simplicitarian/113212686270895144
It will not be mentioned in any big news media outside of New Zealand.
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?
Because soup on plexiglass doesn’t save humanity?
I think some soup on a person is a small price to pay. Frankly, I feel beheading a few million rich people and their spawn is also a SMALL PRICE for eliminating the problem with humanity.
But let’s start with the soup.
What doesn’t make sense about this to you?
