By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
It seems the “cool protestor kids” are doing the “monster (potato) mash” these days . . . all over works of art.
In case you’ve somehow missed it, European climate protesters have devised a new and slightly unorthodox tactic in the fight to curb global emissions: throwing food and other substances at famous paintings.
It’s difficult to know exactly what to make of this. Are they simply a gaggle of ideologically supercharged philistines? Or do they have an ethical leg to stand on?
So far the tally of abused artwork includes a black, oily liquid thrown at Gustav Klimt’s Death and Life, mashed potatoes chucked at Claude Monet’s Les Meules, tomato soup poured over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers and even our beloved Emily Carr has not been spared the nutritional assault.
In a true display of Canadiana the environmental group Stop Fracking Around splashed Carr’s Stumps and Sky with. . . wait for it. . . maple syrup.
Aside from some clearly clever names, are these passionate protestors also being very clever in grabbing the ultimate publicity in the shortest amount of time?
I mean how many people would have heard of the British group Just Stop Oil or their German counterparts Letzte Generation, if they hadn’t adopted these outlandish tactics?
The obvious question is why? How does defacing such beautiful, culturally significant masterpieces further their cause?
The answer is in part “shock and awe.” It’s about making people question their own comfort zones, to jar them out of complacency as some of the protestors have explained. They also ask a vital question: what value will these paintings have in a not distant future of climate change induced disaster after disaster?
As one of the soup wielding perpetrators that took aim at the Van Gogh masterpiece pointed out: “There are still people who are way more outraged about that action than the 33 million people in Pakistan being displaced by floods.” Got a point there.
The Van Gogh by the way, like most of the others which have suffered food afronts, is protected by glass.
I’m fully supportive of non-destructive, peaceful civil disobedience for a worthy cause. Climate change is the most pressing worthy cause I can think of. The protests earlier this year over perceived threats to freedom in Canada, meh, they don’t even rate.
Museum curators, art lovers and a wide swath of the public at large appears to find these actions egregious.
But in so doing they have precisely made the point for the protesters. They care more about a piece of art (which in most of the cases was not damaged) than the very future of this planet.
And make no mistake it is the future of this planet at stake. Those who are too dull to understand the connection between fossil fuels and the climate emergency deserve at the very least to be stuck on a freeway because a climate activist has super-glued himself to an overhead gantry.
One thing is for sure, climate activism is only going to increase and I fully sympathize with these highly motivated protestors not least of all because most of them are young and they are the ones who will inherit a worn-out, beaten and battered shell of a planet if we continue to drag our feet on making concrete steps on addressing the climate emergency.
And if the recently concluded COP27 demonstrated anything, it’s that the oil and gas industry, their 600 apologists and a wide swath of politicians do not give an actual damn about heading off the climate crisis. Shame on all of you.
