Why throwing food at art is stupid
And five areas activists should focus on instead
Wunderkammer Exhibit #12
This one’s personal. I simply don’t understand why intelligent people who are passionately committed to climate protection attack works of art in museums, some of which are centuries old and belong to our cultural heritage.
I probably wouldn’t even be publicly upset if it weren’t for the fact that in recent weeks journalists and other more or less prominent Twitter users have been accusing the critics of these actions of being bigoted and not taking climate protection seriously. To the critics art is more important than our planet and human lives, so the say. That’s bullshit, if you’ll pardon my french.
I have great sympathy for climate activists and their goals. I think it’s important that politics, business and each of us make a contribution to stopping global warming. I, in my everyday life, make conscious decisions to protect the climate — concerning mobility, electricity and water consumption, food, etc. What I understand is, that Just Stop Oil and Last Generation want as much attention as possible for their issues. They want to be seen and heard. While I agree that extreme situations may require extreme measures, I don’t think that anything goes in the name of climate protection. Off the cuff, I can think of three other actions that would cause a stir, they would also at least ostracize me socially, or even put me in jail. I do not mention them here, because I don’t want to give the simpletons among the activists any silly ideas.
Here are five reasons why it is stupid and ignorant to throw food at art:
1. Destroying historical art treasures is a favorite tactic of terrorists, like the Taliban. They already blew up Buddhist statues in the Valley of Bamyan twenty years ago, and they continue to loot museums and destroy any cultural artifacts that seem un-Islamic to them. One should not associate with this kind of people.
2. Oil paintings have been the target of attacks so far. As an indication of the impact of fossil energy on destroying our climate, seriously? But not even this aspect is really thought through. The activists picked works by Leonardo da Vinci, Lukas Cranach, Raffael, Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet for their assaults. All artists from the Renaissance and Impressionist era, who were very attached to nature, even worshipped it.
3. Food waste should be taboo for environmentally conscious and hopefully equally socially minded people. If someone has leftover tomato soup, mashed potatoes or whatever, they may take it to an institution that distributes it to the needy, especially this winter.
4. The children of the activists, the next generation, will possibly not only be happy about a healthy environment, but also about being able to enjoy art treasures, like the Mona Lisa, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, The Sistine Madonna, Sunflowers or Meules in close-up. This will no longer be possible in the future, when museums have to put their treasures in huge bulletproof glass cases or instruct visitors to keep large safety distances.
5. With such actions, the activists are also offending people who would otherwise support them — ideologically and also financially. Because someone like me doesn’t understand why anyone wants to damage something worth protecting to get attention for another thing worth protecting (our precious planet).
Do I think the groups should just make their case in public discussions? No, I’m a big fan of action (including performance art). However, the groups’ actions should focus on the sectors that emit the most CO2: Power generation, industry, transport and mobility, building management, agriculture. Painting and museums are not among them. One or the other attention-grabbing action must come to mind that does not damage cultural treasures. For inspiration, Just Stop Oil and Last Generation may look at some of the legendary Greenpeace actions. If the groups still can’t imagine more suitable actions than throwing food at oil paintings, I don’t trust them to come up with any useful proposals for transforming society in the direction of greater sustainability.
