Environmental protesters threw tomato soup over one of Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers paintings at the National Gallery in London on Friday, in the latest “direct action” stunt targeting art.
The gallery in Trafalgar Square said the protesters caused “minor damage to the frame, but the painting is unharmed.”
The painting went back on display a few hours after the attack.
Photo: EPA-EFE / JUST STOP OIL
Protest group Just Stop Oil, which was behind the action, wants to end the British government’s approval for exploring, developing and producing fossil fuels, and has mounted a series of high-profile protests.
The London Metropolitan Police said officers arrested two protesters from the organization for criminal damage and aggravated trespass after they at about 11am “threw a substance” at the painting in the gallery and glued themselves to a wall.
Police added they had unglued the protesters and taken them to a central London police station.
Photo: AFP
A video posted on Twitter by the Guardian environment correspondent Damien Gayle and retweeted by the protest group shows two young women wearing T-shirts bearing the slogan: “Just Stop Oil” lobbing soup out of cans at the iconic painting.
After glueing themselves to the wall, one of them shouts: “What is worth more, art or life?”
“Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?” she asks.
In the video, someone can be heard yelling: “oh my god” as the soup hits the canvas and another person shouts: “security!” while soup drips from the frame onto the floor.
Just Stop Oil said in a statement that its members threw two cans of Heinz Tomato soup over the painting to demand the government halt all new oil and gas projects.
It later wrote on Twitter: “Keep giving us new oil and gas, and you will keep getting soup.”
The group said the painting has an estimated value of US$84.2 million.
The National Gallery says on its Web site that the signed painting from 1888 was acquired by the gallery in 1924.
Van Gogh created seven versions of Sunflowers, and five are on public display in museums and galleries across the world.
One of the museums — the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam — said it was keeping “a close eye on developments” that might affect its own security measures.
Well-known Dutch art detective Arthur Brand, dubbed the “Indiana Jones of the Art World” for recovering famous artworks, condemned the attack.
“There are hundreds of ways to achieve attention for the climate problems. This should not be one of them,” Brand said.
The attack came a week after British Secretary of State for the Home Department Suella Braverman issued a threat to direct action climate protesters, accusing them of using “guerrilla tactics” to bring “chaos and misery” to the public.
“Whether you’re Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain or Extinction Rebellion, you cross a line when you break the law — and that’s why we’ll keep putting you behind bars,” Braverman said.
Just Stop Oil has previously targeted several other famous paintings with glue attacks.
In June, two of its members glued their hands to the frame of Van Gogh’s painting Peach Trees in Blossom at the Courtauld Gallery in London.
In July, supporters glued their hands to the frame of British painter John Constable’s The Hay Wain at the National Gallery.
They first taped over the canvas with a “reimagined version” of the bucolic scene, showing the landscape covered in pollution, dotted with wildfires and overflown by aircraft.
In the same month, they glued themselves to a full-scale copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper at the Royal Academy in London.
In the past few days, Just Stop Oil has held multiple protests blocking major roads.
London police Commissioner Mark Rowley said of the protests that he was “frustrated so many officers are being taken away from tackling issues that matter most to communities.”
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