Art Attack
In a recent London event, a group of environmental protestors entered the National Gallery and threw tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” one of the six surviving images of sunflowers painted by van Gogh in 1888 and 1889. It was not the first time that protestors used such an approach to press their demand. According to articles published in various media outlets Climate protesters across Europe have been gluing themselves to the frames of famous paintings in a series of attention-grabbing stunts for months.
According to various media reports, activists in the United Kingdomtook up a half-dozen masterpieces, including John Constable’s “The Hay Wain.” Protesters in Germany, according to media reports, have stuck themselves to works such as Rubens’ “Massacre of the Innocents,” which hangs in Munich’s Alte Pinakothek. Work in the Uffizi, Florence, and the Vatican Museums have also been targeted in Italy.
The protestors use such iconic paintings to get attention and to make their initiative to reach more people. According to NewYork Times two members of Just Stop Oil entered room 43 of the National Gallery in London, opened two tins of Heinz cream of tomato soup, and threw them at Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” one of the treasures of the museum’s collection. After throwing the tomato soup, the protesters smeared glue on their hands and glued themselves to the wall beneath the artwork. Visitors to the gallery can be heard saying “Oh, my gosh!” and calling for security in videos of the incident posted online; one of the activists delivers a speech in which they ask visitors whether they “are more concerned about the protection of a painting, or the protection of our planet and people?”
Just Stop Oil campaign allege that Allowing the extraction of new oil and gas resources in the UK is an obscene and genocidal policy that will kill our children and condemn humanity to oblivion. It just must stop. And if we continue down our current path it will destroy families and communities. We will face the starvation and the slaughter of billions of the poor – and the utter betrayal of our children and their future.
The campaign on their website further claim that the government is actively enabling the fossil fuel industry through obscene subsidies and tax breaks for new fossil fuel extraction. In a brief description about the aims of the campaign it is stated on their website that, “Does our government get this? They are They are wasting billions supporting unicorn technologies such as carbon capture and storage projects which provide a fig leaf for business as usual to continue. There has been no rapid and sweeping social change, no widespread adoption of low carbon technology, no war-style mobilisation.
In eight years, we need to end our reliance on fossil fuels completely. The transition will require massive investment in clean technology, renewables, and energy storage but it cannot be done at current levels of energy consumption. We need to cut energy demand by insulating Britain and rethinking how we travel including providing free public transport everywhere. This starts by switching government subsidies from dirty fossil fuels towards clean energy, transport and insulation. Killer fact: In recent years government subsidies for the production and consumption of fossil fuels amounted to £12 billion a year, that is equivalent to £230 million every week.
The choice: rapid transition to a low energy and low carbon world, or social collapse. We can do it now, in an orderly manner – creating millions of proper skilled jobs and protecting the rights of workers in sunset industries – or we wait for the unavoidable collapse.
Climate collapse will mean the end of workers’ rights, women’s rights, all human rights. It is already the greatest injustice visited on the global south in human history. If you are not in resistance you are appeasing evil. If you continue to stand by you are betraying 200 years of struggle and the sacrifice of those that came before us. It is time to put everything aside, we are going into resistance with or without you. Are you bystander or are you going to rise up?
The event of London National Gallery was their recent stunt which brought them into headlines. It attracted global attention and many expressed their concern for the condition of the painting after which National Gallery briefed that the work was unharmed aside from some minor damage to the frame. The campaign smartly choices such events and places to execute their plan which can have a greater impact, they actually do not want to damage any property but to express their genuine concern that most people tend to ignore. In an interview with New YorkTimesMel Carrington, a spokeswoman for Just Stop Oil, said that the group’s intention had been to generate publicity and to create debate around the climate crisis and the actions needed to stop it.
She was further quoted as saying that “Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” had nothing to do with climate change, she said. It was simply “an iconic painting, by an iconic painter” and an attack on it would generate headlines. But the choice of soup was more symbolic. In Britain, many householders were struggling to pay fuel and food bills because of soaring inflation, and some could not even afford to heat up a can of soup. The government should be helping ordinary people deal with “the cost-of-living crisis,” rather than enabling fossil fuel extraction.”
She has further claimed that activists had checked in advance that the work was glazed, so the soupy splattering would cause no damage and could simply be wiped away. And Just Stop Oil planned further actions, she added.
‘Just Stop Oil’ which is a coalition of groups working together to ensure that the government commits to ending all new licenses and consents for the exploration, development, and production of fossil fuels in the UK.They mostly in group of two target major cultural events and locations in order to draw attention to their cause and have a large impact. Protesters had previously inserted an “apocalyptic” version of the Hay Wain between the canvas and its frame. In Constable’s country landscape, they used burnt out cars and a plane in their alternate version. “You can forget our ‘green and pleasant land,’ when further oil extraction will lead to widespread crop failures, which means we will be fighting for food,” one of the two protesters said in a statement. Finally, our government’s project todevelop new fossil fuels is doomed.”
Protesters glued themselves to the frame of the 200-year-old artwork, causing minor damage to the Constable’s Hay Wain.
Just Stop Oil campaign is not a movement against art moreover its demonstration and stunts are artistic in appearance. though their concern is not to make a piece of performance art but the way they setup their protest causes aesthetic impulses in the viewer. Their main aim is to create awareness and they are worried about the behaviour of people in charge who spend more on preserving our past than securing our future.
Artist and Artwor: Nour Zantah
Nour Zantah was born in 1989 in Homs, Syria. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Damascus in 2011 and her Master’s Degree in International Contemporary Art & Design Practice from Limkokwing University of Creative Technology in Malaysia in 2014. Nour received her Ph.D. in Fine Arts, with a focus on painting, from The University of Northampton in the United Kingdom in 2020. She has exhibited her work all over the world, including Syria, Algeria, Jordan, and the United Kingdom. Following the start of the Syrian revolution, Nour instinctively began to focus her work on the subject of violence and war, with a special interest in the aesthetic and expressive qualities that can be achieved while depicting violence, as well as the complex interactions and inspirations visible in how artists respond to modern media.
