Visitors at Louvre look on in shock as Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece attacked by environmental protesters
Two environmental protesters have hurled soup on to the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris, calling for “healthy and sustainable food”. The painting, which was behind bulletproof glass, appeared to be undamaged.
Gallery visitors looked on in shock as two women threw the yellow-coloured soup before climbing under the barrier in front of the work and flanking the splattered painting, their right hands held up in a salute-like gesture.
One of the two activists removed her jacket to reveal a white T-shirt bearing the slogan of the environmental activist group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) in black letters.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Gallery visitors looked on in shock as two women threw the yellow-coloured soup before climbing under the barrier in front of the work and flanking the splattered painting, their right hands held up in a salute-like gesture.
Footage posted on X captured the attack on Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece as well as the gasps of visitors and the cries of children apparently shocked by the incident.
Louvre staff scrambled quickly to erect black cloth screens around the painting and the protesters but failed to effectively block the view of the scene.
Riposte Alimentaire is part of the A22 umbrella movement of protest groups in 12 countries, which also includes Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion.
In a statement sent to AFP, it said the soup throwing marked the “start of a campaign of civil resistance with the clear demand … of the social security of sustainable food”.
Questions were being asked as to how the women managed to smuggle the soup into the Louvre, as strict bag controls at most major galleries are now normal practice due to numerous other attacks on paintings, including a 2022 mashed potato attack by Letzte Generation (Last Generation) activists on Claude Monet’s Les Meules (Haystacks) at the Barberini gallery in Potsdam, Germany.
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That sure will encourage work on environmental issues. /s
Funnily enough this has been the most successful form of environmental activism to this day
Successful in pissing off the general public and causing them to ignore anything of substance that you have to say, sure. Pushing people away from your cause is not a good strategy if you want to effect change.
Hey guys science says our plant is heating up due to carbon emissions we are creating by burning fossil fuels. Can we tone it down a bit?
No
Hey guys going to chain myself outside, because this is super important
Don’t care
Hey guys, going to burn myself alive to protest climate change
Meh
Soups and super glue on art!
Oh the humanity! Why would you not engage with us in simple conversation before chucking a cream of tomato onto bulletproof glass!?
Wait… THAT’S WHAT GOT YOUR ATTENTION?!
Literally killing yourself to protest climate change has barely made the news so yea, for some reason people only talk about it if you throw soup at glass in front of art for some reason.
It will make the climate crisis be covered in headlines and make it harder to ignore. This IS a legitimate form of protest. They didn’t do any harm and brought attention to their cause.
Yeah the article is a bit strange. They call them environmental protesters but they seem to have been protesting food insecurity. Which I guess can be considered environmental but isn’t usually what I think of.
It will make the climate crisis be covered in headlines and make it harder to ignore
No it won’t
This IS a legitimate form of protest.
NO, it isn’t
you are talking about them. Therefore protest worked. Therefore it was a protest.
The only legitimate forms of protest are ones that are easily ignored, right?
My own personal style of humor is to say absurd things with a straight face, and unfortunately I have found that on the Internet there is always going to be someone who believes me without question no matter how absurd a statement I make. Because unfortunately there’s always someone on the Internet who actually believes something that absurd.
Name a better form of protest to get the people’s attention.
Spoiler: They’ve tried that before.
The world is making progress in climate change. This isn’t going to make it go faster.
The world is making progress in climate change.
It better hurry the fuck up.
While continuing to tap new oil fields and failing to make sufficient progress. Also, this one isn’t about climate, but healthy and sustainable food. Connected issues, but still.
All that aside, to come back to the somewhat dodged question, what would make things go faster?
Your reading comprehension is poor. This isnt about climate change. This is about food security.
Why is soup the choice rather than dye, ink, or paint?
They knew they couldn’t (probably didn’t want to) damage the painting itself. The Mona Lisa has been behind bullet proof glass since the mid 90s, so it wasnt a secret. So they chose something that was relevant to their cause and they probably (rightly) guessed that soup would make a headline when paint or dye has been done so many times before that it might not.
Real reason: They’re demanding that France make assurances for access to food.
Fake reason: They’re Warhol fans.
Or one of those laser “pointers” with crazy high power, 1 watt or higher?
They’re bringing attention to food insecurity, so their method is… wasting food. Yea that checks out
There’s three types of protestors in the world:
-
Cause minimal, non serious disruption. Spread the message without pissing people off, because that’ll make people more receptive to joining you.
-
Cause serious disruptions, even if it pisses people off, because it brings attention to the issue makes it impossible to ignore.
-
Bring attention to an issue at all costs by any means necessary, even if it makes the issue worse or has absolutely nothing to do with the issue. Be an asshole to make people listen.
There’s a valid argument that without 2, people won’t take something seriously, and mild inconveniences are the whole point of nonviolent protest. It gets a bit morally grey when it would do something like prevent an ambulance from operating though. I don’t think anyone who normally waves that away would feel the same if it resulted in the death of a loved one.
And 3 is just clout chasers imo, like in this situation. I can’t take someone protesting food insecurity seriously if they’re wasting food to do so.
I really hate the destruction or attempted destruction of art in order to bring awareness to a social cause. I get in this case the painting is highly protected, but there have been plenty of other instances where this has happened to other art where that wasn’t the case.
Not only are you a self-entitled piece of shit for tying to destroy something that is on display for public enjoyment, but you are virtually guaranteeing that anybody who didn’t already agree with you won’t take you seriously because you are acting like such a piece of shit.
Seriously, there are a lot of legitimate reasons for civil disobedience and public protest. This is not the way to go about that, and if you think it is then fuck you in particular.
Edit: I didn’t think this was going to be such a divisive issue. After some further research I am retracting my earlier statement about other art being damaged in these protests because I don’t see much evidence for that after all. It seems like these protestors are often targeting art they know will get maximum media exposure without causing lasting damage.
HOWEVER, I still think this type of action is counterproductive when you are trying to, hopefully, win over people that either do not support or are not aware of your message. Collective action is an effective means to make change in society. I am, again, not disputing that. I just think that if the goal is to gain broad support for your cause you need to choose targets that are more representative of that cause; rather than art, which does get media exposure, but which ultimately serves to obfuscate or overshadow the true purpose behind your protest. Being savvy about your target audience goes further and deeper into the social zeitgeist than simply getting headlines for being angsty.
Seriously, there are a lot of legitimate reasons for civil disobedience and public protest. This is not the way to go about that, and if you think it is then fuck you in particular.
They never said they ‘like every other civil rights movement except for this one.’
You did.
Isn’t that a fair assumption to make? Are there people that trash talk civil rights movements of the past or something?
Such a weird response. lol. Why would that need to have been said?
A fair amount of people here are actually very much not liberal and dislike liberals heavily. I’m not sure what the right label is (Marxist perhaps) but they use “libs” just like the far right does.
You nailed it. I’ve never heard of this group before, but out of principal I don’t support them. You’re a better ways to get attention. This is a kin to a child during a temper tantrum, destroying things to get attention.
So now they’ve caused no damage and you have heard of them, yet for some reason you don’t support them? What better way to gain your support should they have tried? Should they have just asked nicely?
This was a cheap and effective way to make international news. It caused no damage and no one was hurt in the process. This is what people who complain about protesting say the ideal outcomes are, yet still they complain. If they block traffic, that’s disrupting people’s lives. If they damage proterty, that’s bad because you aren’t supposed to cause damage. If they do neither, that’s bad because they aren’t supposed to make you consider them. Come on. What method is the right one in your opinion?
You can think of a single way to get a message out there outside of this act… Really…
Gosh if there was only a method to communicate with people all across the world… Perhaps social platforms or mediums of which to put forth an idea that could just naturally get shared with everybody else… Terrible shame nothing like that exists.
Saying that the painting wasn’t damaged is very shortsighted. What if these places determine that the risk just isn’t worth it. Sure it’s behind bulletproof Glass but not everything is. I really hate it when people assume that the repercussions for their actions are either immediate or they won’t exist.
What better way to gain your support should they have tried? Should they have just asked nicely?
Yes.
If they block traffic, that’s disrupting people’s lives.
And emergency vehicles. I don’t know why no one else thinks this is a big deal. Do you really want fire trucks and ambulances and people going to the hospital to be blocked? What about regular people? I have to pick up my kids from aftercare mon-friday why would it be a good thing that my kids have to spend who knows how many hours stuck there?
If they damage proterty, that’s bad because you aren’t supposed to cause damage.
I agree. Please don’t damage property.
Come on. What method is the right one in your opinion?
Peaceful protest, dialog, websites, YouTube videos, social media posts, pamphlets, books, seminars, lectures, speeches, letter writing campaigns, change.org…
This is not the way to go about that
What is your way to go about that?
If you aren’t doing anything, what way(s) would you deem acceptable? If you know acceptable ways, why aren’t you following through? Honest if-questions, not meant as assumptions.
Healthy and sustainable food seems to be a decent goal. People should be able to get behind this. So if all the disagreement is about the right approach, where are the people with the right approach, and where are all the people voicing their concern about art supporting them?
Please help me out. It feels as if people are more concerned about pieces of art which they may never see, than about healthy food, the climate, or other major issues which affect everyone.
I get why it puts people off, these points exist. I just wonder what the “right” alternative to these “wrong” approaches is, and wether the critics walk the talk.
Raise money and awareness through non-destructive means, start a program, work on the problem yourselves and hope more people join in. Start a fucking tik-tok challenge, I don’t know, honestly.
But throwing soup at art is just cringey and makes you look weird. No one is going to be on board with that but other soup-throwers. Then you just have a whole group of people travelling around throwing soup at monuments and nobody knows what the fuck your point is, as evidenced by this comment section.
What is your way to go about that?
If you aren’t doing anything, what way(s) would you deem acceptable?
They’re not doing anything except ruining the day of normal people around them. And after they give themselves morale immunity from any responsibility for anything bad that happens.
If they want to protest they should sink yatchs, ground private airplanes and drag billionaires by the hair out of their bunkers and execute them. That would actually be something. But they choose to disturb random working class peasants trying to enjoy a minute for themselves instead of being crushed by capitalism for one pretty moment.
Useless arguments are thrown around like hot garbage here. Of course they won’t do what’s excpected for change because they don’t want change. They want a free pass from any personal responsibility.
There hasn’t really been many instance of art getting destroyed. This is legitimate imo, it gets in the news and no real damage is done. Personally, I think it’s not far enough.
If oil companies get their way, whole countries are going to be destroyed, not just paintings.
It’s also plain to see that any form of protest against oil companies is quickly villainized by the media. There’s an agenda at play when you can’t march, stand in traffic or just throw soup at glass.
To think sustainability in agriculture is not about climate change is rather a narrow definition of climate change.
Blocking traffic is pretty shitty though because you’re hurting working people as opposed to the people who have real power and status in society. These are people who depend on hourly wages and often have multiple jobs together with childcare scheduling commitments and the like.
Just wait until they find out how inconvenient widespread environmental catastrophe is.
I get in this case the painting is highly protected, but there have been plenty of other instances where this has happened to other art where that wasn’t the case.
Which ones? I’ve heard a lot of complaining about people destroying art that was protected and not damaged. The target of this kind of thing isn’t the art, it’s the headlines. They don’t actually want to damage the art, so they purposefully target famous art that is protected. The media will quickly try to minimize that it was protected and lead people to believe they caused actual damage though, so that often gets lost.
Ah yes it is the media’s fault for not providing free advertising for them.
No, it’s societies fault for not doing what we need to do. It’s the medias fault that this gathers attention and makes it an effective and harmless method of protest.
I’m not usually inclined to conspiracy but I honestly think this group is planted by somebody to make environmental activists look bad.
They aren’t even protesting about (necessarily) environmentalism! It’s crazy the number of people outraged that soup was thrown on glass that was in front of a painting and didn’t even get to the part where it says this is about food security.
That just shows why this isn’t an effective form of protest. I’ve seen a lot of comments about how “this gets attention” but fail to see how no one is actually talking about the “point” these protestors were trying to make. Which basically ruins anything the protestors are trying to do as no one focuses on the issues expressed.
Although part of it might also just be the classic issue of people not reading that much past the headline. People see “protestors throw soup at Mona Lisa”, and not get much farther than that.
I would argue it’s a slightly effective form… but only if they advertise the point. There’s been plenty of times I’ve seen this for environmentalism, and people start talking about it in the comments. Not completely directly, but it gets them talking. Like when they would super glue their hands to the ground, in one video one of the protestors threw the bottle into a drain. So people started talking about how hypocritical it was because that’s bad for the environment. Which was a small thing, but the conversation was happening.
People used to make fun activists who would throw red paint onto fashion models wearing fur. But over the years, that slowed down because designers stopped using real fur. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it was because they were afraid of getting their stuff ruined, but now most designers won’t use fur for ethical reasons. Because they realize animals don’t need to be bred and killed for their suits.
The only real downside is that it does make them come off as assholes, but also no real way to turn that around. Like black people would do sit ins at restaurants, and a lot of white people hated them for it… but then other white people also got to see them get abused for it. Things like that can help change people’s perspective. With this, they throw it, and then it mostly stops there. They’re just assholes. It gets the conversation going, but not enough, because it just stops at them being assholes.
I know it’s a minor point and food security is an actual very practical concern and valid reason to protest, but I feel like one of the tenants of a successful protest is very much like advertising : make the target directly relevant to the message. “Art and historical conservation efforts aren’t worth your concern as much as (blank)” feels like it’s a muddy message when the whole point of art culture is that it is kind of frivolous. Quite frankly you could throw anything at a beloved historical conservation peice and make the news even if your reason was “I felt like it”. People are probably gunna treat it as a bare faced stunt for attention because it’s already been done and the response is predictable. Our society wide fascination with historical preservation is immediately hostile to anything that seems to be spontaneous. It’s the opposite of exploiting a weak spot in people’s thinking.
I understand and am sympathetic to their cause but I am pretty sure there’s some property damage or mischief stunt that could have been immediately more effective by being somehow tied more directly to food, convenience culture or contemporary targets.
If you got evidence present it. I tend to take people at their word. If someone tells me they are religion x or fighting for cause y I run on that assumption. There are of course shills but internet shilling or talking on media is not going to land you in jail. It would take a very very large sum of money to convince me that I should do something like this.
You underestimate how dumb the average person is. Couple that with a good cause and a lot of drive, and you get the statistical certainty that from time to time someone is going to do something unproductively dumb, supposedly for the sake of a good cause that doesn’t get promoted in any way.
It’s just the obvious trajectory of social media attention seeking within the disaffected aesthetic. Someone that loves to feel special and the center of attention picks a cause almost at random then throws themselves into the fray as loudly as possible.
It’s always happened, you can see them in every community and aesthetic - conspiracy theories, political types, sports fans… Protest communities are especially attractive to attention seekers, it’s great for social media clout to pretend that you’re doing these crazy things for a bigger cause
