Van Gogh in Tomato? Why There is No Right Way for Climate Protest

Photo by Ivan Radic.

The footage of Van Gogh’s tomato-soup battered Sunflowers painting left many believing the Just Stop Oil climate activists had gone too far, scolding them for desecrating masterpieces and wasting food. 21-year-old Phoebe Plummer was heard asking “What is worth more – art or life?” before gluing herself to the wall beneath the soup-covered painting. Plummer reaffirmed to her critics that she was aware that the demonstration appeared “ridiculous”, but she would not have carried it out had there not been glass protecting the painting. A few weeks later, two activists in Germany replicated the same protest, this time with mashed potatoes on Monet’s Grainstacks, and similarly, no damage was reported. 

The outrage of the public is divided, but it is not new. Activism makes people uncomfortable and evokes feelings of intrusion. When it meets the public’s eye and interferes in daily life, it is controversial and inconvenient. When a NASA climate scientist, along with members of the group Scientists Rebellion, locked himself to the door of Chase Bank in early April, he was met with an arrest. Similarly, when Just Stop Oil activists glued themselves to the tarmac in East London, they were also met with arrests. The response to several climate activism demonstrations has been arrests, and after so many failed attempts at grabbing media attention and sparking a dialogue, desperation looms among activists. Critics of the tarmac demonstration claimed they wanted to be left out of climate politics and drive to their destinations unbothered. One critic went so far as to say the demonstrations were “pathetic” and he would start “throwing punches.”

Activists’ demonstrations interrupt the conveniences of everyday life: driving when there is an organized roadblock, walking into an art museum and watching the desecration of a beloved masterpiece, or attempting a trip to the bank only to be met with a mass police presence. If we are offended by these inconveniences, then what is the right way to protest? How can a threat to the planet’s survival be conveyed in a way that is not ‘in your face’? Globally, consumers read countless articles about record-breaking heat waves, life-threatening floods, and wildfires ravaging the globe everyday. Their morning coffee is regularly coupled with headlines of catastrophic loss of life and environmental destruction, trivializing the urgency of climate change; what is meant to be an existential crisis becomes as mundane as the daily weather report. Van Gogh drenched in soup or Monet lathered with potatoes, however, presents an interruption of this spiral of desensitization. These famous works, worth millions of dollars, attract attention due to their recognizability. It is a strategic choice to draw public attention, whether it be support or criticism, rather than what critics suggest is a poorly-planned and counterproductive food war with the great artists of history. After the initial shock of seeing a historic work covered in food, the viewer is left pondering why these activists would do such a thing. 

Protest is an act of civil disobedience and of expressing desperation, and the vandalism of artwork has frequently been used throughout history for these purposes. Three women’s suffragists had broken the glass of 13 compositions in the United Kingdom’s Manchester Art Gallery to relay their frustrations on the lack of political agency for women. A year later, nine more suffragists did the same in British museums. Just as these historic protestors did, the Just Stop Oil activists created a moment of demonstrative solidarity, with people in Germany taking a hold of their tactics and inundating the media with stories of their protest. For political activists, controversy is preferable to apathy. The slew of viral videos of soup, mashed potatoes and cake being thrown at lucrative pieces of art has utilized these emotions to reopen the dialogue with a new perspective. Whether people focus on the message or the dramatics of the demonstration, there still exists a dialogue stemming from the actions of these climate activists. If the objective is to draw attention, the activists were successful by way of media. 

Destroying art in the name of activism is not preferable, and some may say it is better to target the fossil fuel companies themselves. Yet, if the activists had performed this demonstration at their door, as they have before, news would not circulate with the same speed and salience; the story, simply put, would not have been newsworthy. Hence, the targeting of art symbolizes an act of desperation, not of ill-intent. It is a response to the years-long desensitization of climate catastrophes occurring around the world. 

There is no truth more uncomfortable than confronting the fact that the way we live our lives is destructive. To encounter this truth whilst going about our everyday lives is even more discomforting. When petitions to the governments, intense demonstrations at political officials’ buildings, and strikes from public institutions do not work, activists return to the public. Corporations have historically not assumed responsibility for their role in contributing to emissions and governments expanding fossil fuel contracts may acknowledge the effects of their actions but rarely change them. The limitation of choice is clear for activists. 

Judging by the scale of public outcry over the Sunflowers protest, it appears that people are more willing to unite in outrage over spilt soup than over climate change. This unyielding focus on the protection of art begs the question as to whether people are focused enough on the more pressing, yet less easily visible, climate crisis at hand. Rather than a reflection of the activists’ tactical success, the public response is more reflective of where we posit value. When people feel compelled to put themselves in situations that often lead to arrests, perhaps it is time we reevaluate what lesson we derive from their campaigns. When the protests are inconvenient, disruptive, and seemingly ‘extreme’, we need to look no further than what climate change actually is: inconvenient, disruptive, and extreme. 

Fiza Rizvi (CC ‘24) is a staff writer for CPR and is studying political science and computer science.