Tragedy in three acts

 

By Yasaman Nabati Mazloumi

What is this story about?  

Protests against the increasing human-induced effects of climate change are growing worldwide. The need for attention by activist groups brought them to conduct extreme action able to easily and quickly reach a large audience through the media.

These actions may also target museum paintings, statues, and other artworks. By gluing, smashing, or chaining themselves to a monument, they aim to draw attention to wider socio-political issues.

This short article investigates these acts not only as forms of media attention but also as art performances as well as vandalism against heritage.

Act one

Earlier this year Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (a common target for protest) was smeared with a cake by a man dressed as an old woman in a wheelchair. When he got close to the artwork, he threw the cake and yelled, “Think of the Earth, people are destroying the Earth!" 

A man dressed as an old lady threw cake to Mona Lisa. He has been hospitalized for mental instability (Credit: @Popbase/Twitter).

Act two

In July 2022, environmental protesters have glued themselves to the glass protecting Botticelli’s Primavera which is on display at Uffizi gallery in Florence, unfurling a banner reading “Ultima Generazione No Gas No Carbone” (Last Generation, No Gas, No Coal). 

 

Climate protesters glued themselves to Botticelli's celebrated Primavera painting at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (CREDIT: Laura Lezza/Getty Images).

Act three

Two activists from the environmental campaigning group “Just Stop Oil” threw Heinz tomato soup over Van Gogh’s Sunflower painting in the National Gallery in London, followed by gluing themselves to the wall and saying “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?”. 

Activists pour tomato soup on Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London (CREDIT: Just Stop Oil/Instagram).

These are not the first vandalism acts in museums. More than a hundred years ago, suffragette Mary Richardson marched into London’s National portrait gallery to slash Diego Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus with a meat cleaver in protest of a fellow suffragette’s arrest. Unfortunately, there have been several other incidents from environmental protestors, such as chaining themselves to the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, gluing themselves to a plinth of the Laocoön and his Sons sculpture in Vatican Museums, or gluing to the 19th-century My Heart's in the Highlands painting by Horatio McCulloch at the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow, just to name a few. Following the incident at Glasgow, William Turner's painting Tomson's Aeolian Harp at the Manchester Art Gallery, as well as Vincent van Gogh's Peach Trees in Blossom in London’s Courtauld Gallery and the 19th-century painting The Hay Wain (1821) by John Constable in London’s National Gallery were targeted.

While it has been decades that scientists have been warning governments of the perils of dangerous emissions, I don’t intend here to argue about the real action on climate change: rather, in respect of the three acts of tragedy, I would draw attention to these three act as forms of increasing media attention, art performance, and vandalism.

Increasing media attention

It is known that the media are accustomed to particular types of activism; a march in street or a sit-in act in the city center or in front of a global organization. Once these acts are done, attention soon would draw to other news. However, trying new strategy such as gluing themselves to artworks is definitely an innovation that can make headlines and stays on the news channels for days even besides the defacing of the artworks. While some have applauded the activists’ efforts in raising awareness, many others have not been impressed by such acts: Britain’s minister for culture called them “attention seekers” and whose acts are not helping any but their own ego. This is not totally correct. The gluing may not work in the end and many said such violent acts cannot change people’s minds instantly, however, it became still a successful protest which received vast media coverage, not only on their act of gluing themselves or tossing a tomato soup, also the coverage of the security guard dragging those protesters from the area went viral. Finally, people were curious to know their names and professions and now you can even find their date of birth on Google. 

ART PERFORMANCE: Some may say that protesting in an art museum which is the protest itself, might be construed as artwork. The episode in which Italians in Uffizi gallery lay stoned dead on the ground after a museum staff detached them from the painting, was a perfect drama in plot and characters. If the “36 years-old man who was dressed as an old woman, pretending to be disabled and sat in the wheelchair, throwing a cake which he bought from Louvre coffee shop” is not an art performance, then what is? 

VANDALISM: Whatever their reasons were, such protests in a cultural institution and threatening cultural property is and will be an act of vandalism which, in its own nature, appears as a compelling and effective way to attract attention. The term vandalism is a broad concept and includes several kinds of malicious mischief that concern the deliberate destruction, defacement, or damaging of [in our discussion] cultural objects. Most of the recent cases have been investigated by the local police such as Carabinieri in Italy and Scotland Yard in the UK, which charges the arrested protestors with criminal damage and has been bailed pending further inquiries. Vandalism, in law and order terminology, is made up of different parts which are known as elements: physical damage, ownership of the damaged property, and intentionality. The prosecutor must prove that someone has committed each of these elements. However, each country has its own set of penalties for vandalism, which can include community services (serving as a volunteer in an organization), probation, fines (between 1000 to 3000 us dollars or euros), and imprisonment (between 30 to 90 days). 

It’s easy to think that the threat of punishment will dissuade someone from doing the wrong thing. But it has been known that imprisonment itself and severe punishment actually make it more likely that people are going to re-offend. One may think that minimizing the opportunities for protests (such as searching the bags, X-ray scanners, and so on) can be effective. However, it is not an easy task to act upon, as the cultural organizations, galleries, and museums advertise quick accessibility and public appreciation while such physical restrictions will contradict it. Some of the recently adopted strategies in most of the museum was to install a glass enclosure in front of the objects or to ask visitors to put their bag inside a locker.  

These recent vandalism acts are brand new, but not the vandalism itself. Unfortunately, there is no unique and magical solution to it, therefore the threat should have already been identified in each galley and museum, and steps should have been taken to accept, mitigate, and manage the risks based on the needs and situation.