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.
Compared to what they’ve accomplished by getting some plexiglass wet, it seems like sitting on my couch has accomplished the same. Maybe more by staying home, unless they rode bikes or walked to do the deed.
No, no, you see, all attention is good attention, and attention is the most valuable thing to the climate change movement right now. That’s the issue. Not enough people are AWARE that it’s a THING. If they were, we would be making much more progress than we currently are.
/s
I mean, considering how little has happened?
Don’t we need radicals at this point?
Isn’t it said that violence is the language of the unheard?
I’m down with violence, man. But human history and culture isn’t the enemy here, it shouldn’t be the target, and simply ‘raising awareness’ is no longer the goal. Take a sledgehammer to an oil exec’s front door if you want to go the direct action route, not to the Magna Carta.
There are actually probably more effective uses of violence than the oil exec’s front door. But you get what I mean, I hope. Action alone is not enough, it must be action that causes something useful to the cause, like increasing fear in the politicos or ultra-wealthy (as the Suffragists did with arson and bombing campaigns targeting both), or reducing the effectiveness of society as a whole until negotiations are had (as with a general strike, though that’s not violent, generally).
Human history and culture are leverage. The fact that people care about them is why they’re valuable.
Yeah, go for it. I support you.
Public attention can spur recruitment waves for the targets you really care about. If any campaign is to be effective, you need people to know who you are.
Throwing soup at paintings is only radical in how radically stupid it is.
You want radical? Go sabotage an oil refinery. Become eco-terrorists.
What Just Stop Oil is doing is nothing more than feeling good about themselves.
Definitely more. You haven’t pissed a bunch of people off that are on your side on this issue.
If some soup on plexiglass can convince you to let the planet burn, you were never on the side of progress.
This right here. For shame on anyone who genuinely thinks they’re on the right side of history, whining about soup on a Plexiglas barrier.
Anything that targets art is on the wrong side of history.
Old paintings are valuable because people bought into it. Like nfts or crypto. They don’t worth anything. Old people’s baggage. Quit carrying it.
I am insulted by your lack of culture.
I’m not the one that needs convincing. But I’m sure the majority that you actually need on your side are simply insufficiently pure, and a bunch of reactionary dogs anyway, so who cares about gaining their approval for the cause?