Climate Protesters Throw Soup Over van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ - The New York Times

Art & Design|Climate Protesters Throw Soup Over van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’

LONDON — Climate protesters crossed Europe have for months been gluing themselves to the frames of celebrated paintings successful a bid of attention-grabbing stunts.

In Britain, activists person attached themselves to astir half-a-dozen masterpieces including John Constable’s “The Hay Wain.” In Germany, protesters person stuck themselves to works including Rubens’s “Massacre of the Innocents,” which hangs successful the Alte Pinakothek, successful Munich. In Italy, works successful the Uffizi, successful Florence, and astatine the Vatican Museums person been targeted.

Now, protesters successful London person recovered a caller mode to absorption attraction connected their cause: throwing cans of herb crockery astatine a masterpiece.

At conscionable aft 11 a.m. connected Friday, 2 members of Just Stop Oil, a radical that seeks to halt lipid and state extraction successful Britain, entered country 43 of the National Gallery successful London, opened 2 tins of Heinz pick of herb soup, and threw them astatine Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” 1 of the treasures of the museum’s collection. It is 1 of six surviving images of sunflowers that van Gogh made successful 1888 and 1889.

As the gloppy orangish liquid dripped down the glazing that was protecting the painting, the brace smeared their hands with glue and stuck themselves to the partition beneath the work. In videos of the incidental posted online, assemblage visitors tin beryllium heard saying “Oh, my gosh!” and calling for security; 1 of the activists delivers a code successful which they inquire visitors whether they “are much acrophobic astir the extortion of a painting, oregon the extortion of our satellite and people?”

Within minutes, the stunt grabbed attraction worldwide, and galore societal media users expressed interest for the painting’s condition. Yet the National Gallery said successful an email connection that the enactment was unharmed speech from “some insignificant harm to the frame.” The activists had been arrested, the connection added.

Mel Carrington, a spokeswoman for Just Stop Oil, said successful a telephone interrogation that the group’s volition had been to make publicity and to make statement astir the clime situation and the actions needed to halt it.

Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” had thing to bash with clime change, she said. It was simply “an iconic painting, by an iconic painter” and an onslaught connected it would make headlines. But the prime of crockery was much symbolic, Carrington said: In Britain, galore householders were struggling to wage substance and nutrient bills due to the fact that of soaring inflation, and immoderate could not adjacent spend to vigor up a tin of soup. The authorities should beryllium helping mean radical woody with “the outgo of surviving crisis,” alternatively than enabling fossil substance extraction, she added.