Just Stop Oil activists throw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers after fellow protesters jailed
theguardian.com
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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It was covered by glass, unclutch your fucking pearls already.
Van Gogh is my favorite painter, and I would still rather have a habitable planet for future generations than have Sunflowers. If you're more mad about this than you are about what big oil and gas companies are doing, sit down and have a good hard think about where your priorities are. I do not give a shit if you "agree with their message but not their tactics" or if you "think it makes the cause look bad" or whatever other bullshit you want to spew to cover your ass right now. Ultimately, if this caused you to feel a greater sense of righteous anger than the wholesale destruction of our environment for profit does, you are part of the problem. I'd rather side with the people who are trying to make a difference, even if I don't like how they do it, than side with the people plundering our world for personal gain.
Van Gogh died penniless, right? He'd probably be cheering. "Oh no, rich people will be slightly less able to profit off of my work?"
Rich people profiting… is that your description of what happens at an art museum? Maybe you should get off the internet and go visit one.
It's privately owned but okay
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/1/19/japanese-firm-defends-van-gogh-ownership-after-us-lawsuit
Never said otherwise. All I’m saying is that when I pay my $10 and visit the art museum, I profit.
I’m willing to bet that the huge majority of those here supporting these vandals have never been inside a museum.
What a laughable false dilemma.
Your instinct is laudable. Where your judgment is failing you is that these are not people who are making a difference. Stop straining to make something meaningful out of a random act of vandalism. The tiniest act of actual divestment from oil would be more meaningful than slopping soup at a painting. Take the bus one day a month instead of driving. That’s a difference.