Posted on 09/02/2023 11:10:40 AM PDT by nickcarraway
This year, some two dozen world-famous artworks, including pieces by Vermeer, Klimt, and and Munch, have been targeted by various climate activists groups. In a bid to bring attention to their cause, the demonstrators have hurled food at the paintings and glued themselves to frames, causing an uproar in the art community, despite the fact that they enacted no permanent damage to the art.
However, that may soon change.
In an interview with Sky News, Just Stop Oil spokesperson Alex De Koning said that his group has considered following the example of suffragettes who “violently slashed paintings in order to get their messages across.”
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In 1914, the suffragette Mary Richardson made headlines by walking into London’s National Gallery and slashing Diego Velazquez’s 17th-century painting The Rokeby Venus with a meat cleaver. The incident was intended as a protest against the arrest of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst.
“I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history,” Richardson explained. “Justice is an element of beauty as much as color and outline on canvas.”
For months, museum administration across Europe have operated under the threat of a surprise appearance by climate activists. In June and July, Just Stop Oil members glued themselves to the frames of four paintings in museums across the U.K., including van Gogh’s 1889 landscape, Peach Trees in Blossom. Another van Gogh, The Sower (1888), was splashed with pea soup by three activists from Italy’s Ultima Generazione, while two protestors from Germany’s Letzte Generation group hurled mashed potatoes at Monet’s Haystacks (1890).
The viral episodes have ignited debate over the effectiveness of protest tactics.
“It’s people putting themselves on a stage in order to bring attention to something, but you have to ask, does this really change anything,” Adam Weinberg, the director of the Whitney Museum of Art, said in October at a panel discussion about social consciousness in museums.
Last month, 92 signatories from cultural institutions released an open letter denouncing the climate groups’ actions. The activists “severely underestimate the fragility of these irreplaceable objects, which must be preserved as part of our world cultural heritage,” the letter read. “As museum directors entrusted with the care of these works, we have been deeply shaken by their risky endangerment.”
Some climate activists are facing the legal consequences of their actions. On Friday, charges of property damage were filed against a 20-year-old protestor who glued themselves to the historic wooden frame of the Cranach painting The Calm on the Run to Egypt at Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie. In November, two activists in Belgium were sentenced to two months in prison for a protest in which one person glued their hand to the wall next to Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring while another attempted to paste his head to the painting. The painting was unharmed.
According to the Guardian, the public prosecutor had requested four months in prison with two months suspended, saying in a hearing, “An artwork hanging there for all of us to enjoy has been smeared by defendants who felt their message took precedence over everything else.”
Throats should be slashed in return.
Same answer as for the smash and grabbers — shoot to kill. Full stop. That’ll put and end to all this sh*t right now!
Sooner or later it’s gonna come to this.
“The tree of Freedom is watered by the blood of criminals”
— a paraphrase of a patriot
You know those services that people hire to “make up” for their carbon footprint, by planting trees or something? Is there a service to release massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere every time they do this?
It’s not the threat that is disturbing, as the “oh gosh, what will we do?” attitude and hand wringing. Here’s what you do: everything goes behind clear Lexan or is removed from display until further notice. All handbags/belongings will be inspected airport style, questionable people will be escorted away by security etc, and of course stiff legal penalties for even attempts at vandalism. Just come down hard and fast.
These people are unhinged. Absolutely hysterical and irrational.
I wonder what the “carbon footprint” of those extremists is.
What the heck do they expect to have happen? Do they expect that people seeing artwork defaced, will react and think, OMG, I need to stop using oil or petroleum products, because someone defaced a work of art????
How Muslim of them!
Glue the kooks before they even get there.
It’ll stop right after the first activist is blown away.
Do it.
Please.
In a more enlightened day, the two misguided youngsters in the photo accompanying the article would have had their throats slashed and been tossed into a peat bog.
Yeah, that’ll help.
Didn’t they (the governments) do enough damage to the Earth to try to fight this hoax?
How more damage should be done?
They have switched from protestor to criminal.
Children.
How about folks are going to catch these people, cut their spinal cords at the waist and release them into family and friend’s care if this activity doesn’t stop immediately. For every thing you can think of, I’ve got a better one until you are ALL alive, but wishing you were dead.
As long as they are paintings done by Commies, like Picasso.
The World would be much better off without the continued presence of some people. Plus they would significantly decrease their own contributions to CO2 production.
Leave them there.
Destroying artwork has NOTHING to do with the climate.
These freaks are only looking for an excuse for wanton vandalism and anarchy.
Arrest them and throw their butts in jail for as possible.
When will they be called terrorists? Will they have to attend school board meetings?
And they never stop to think about the impact on the environment that the paint production causes.
Stinking idiots.
If they really want to make a contribution towards stopping “climate change” they should go to Canada and take advantage of the MAID program. Problem solved!
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