Visitors at Louvre look on in shock as Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece attacked by environmental protesters
Two environmental protesters have hurled soup on to the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris, calling for “healthy and sustainable food”. The painting, which was behind bulletproof glass, appeared to be undamaged.
Gallery visitors looked on in shock as two women threw the yellow-coloured soup before climbing under the barrier in front of the work and flanking the splattered painting, their right hands held up in a salute-like gesture.
One of the two activists removed her jacket to reveal a white T-shirt bearing the slogan of the environmental activist group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) in black letters.
I really hate the destruction or attempted destruction of art in order to bring awareness to a social cause. I get in this case the painting is highly protected,
but there have been plenty of other instances where this has happened to other art where that wasn’t the case.Not only are you a self-entitled piece of shit for tying to destroy something that is on display for public enjoyment, but you are virtually guaranteeing that anybody who didn’t already agree with you won’t take you seriously because you are acting like such a piece of shit.
Seriously, there are a lot of legitimate reasons for civil disobedience and public protest. This is not the way to go about that, and if you think it is then fuck you in particular.
Edit: I didn’t think this was going to be such a divisive issue. After some further research I am retracting my earlier statement about other art being damaged in these protests because I don’t see much evidence for that after all. It seems like these protestors are often targeting art they know will get maximum media exposure without causing lasting damage.
HOWEVER, I still think this type of action is counterproductive when you are trying to, hopefully, win over people that either do not support or are not aware of your message. Collective action is an effective means to make change in society. I am, again, not disputing that. I just think that if the goal is to gain broad support for your cause you need to choose targets that are more representative of that cause; rather than art, which does get media exposure, but which ultimately serves to obfuscate or overshadow the true purpose behind your protest. Being savvy about your target audience goes further and deeper into the social zeitgeist than simply getting headlines for being angsty.
You nailed it. I’ve never heard of this group before, but out of principal I don’t support them. You’re a better ways to get attention. This is a kin to a child during a temper tantrum, destroying things to get attention.
So now they’ve caused no damage and you have heard of them, yet for some reason you don’t support them? What better way to gain your support should they have tried? Should they have just asked nicely?
This was a cheap and effective way to make international news. It caused no damage and no one was hurt in the process. This is what people who complain about protesting say the ideal outcomes are, yet still they complain. If they block traffic, that’s disrupting people’s lives. If they damage proterty, that’s bad because you aren’t supposed to cause damage. If they do neither, that’s bad because they aren’t supposed to make you consider them. Come on. What method is the right one in your opinion?
You can think of a single way to get a message out there outside of this act… Really…
Gosh if there was only a method to communicate with people all across the world… Perhaps social platforms or mediums of which to put forth an idea that could just naturally get shared with everybody else… Terrible shame nothing like that exists.
Saying that the painting wasn’t damaged is very shortsighted. What if these places determine that the risk just isn’t worth it. Sure it’s behind bulletproof Glass but not everything is. I really hate it when people assume that the repercussions for their actions are either immediate or they won’t exist.
They specifically target painting that are behind glass. It wasn’t a mistake that they didn’t damage the painting. It was by design. If it weren’t protected by glass they almost certainly would choose one that is. The point isn’t to cause damage. It’s to get articles written about them. Social media posts won’t get anyone’s attention.
Wasting our fucking time. These shits keep breaking stuff and wonder why no one is treating their ideas worth of respect.
What did they break?
If they had broken something would your argument change?
Charitable interpretation. Assume your interlocutor is logically consistent. If they support this on the grounds that nothing was damaged, it stands to reason that they would not support it if something was damaged.
No, I do not really consider the value of protest based on damage. The person who was saying this protest was bad did however. It is not me saying they’re arguing from a false premise who is not logically consistent. I just stated damage wasn’t done, but my position doesn’t really give that much weight.
I don’t see where my argument has anything contingent on damage not being done. Your argument was contingent on damage being done however, and none (besides a little cleanup) was done. If I said protest was only valid if it doesn’t do damage, then I’d need to consider your argument, but it isn’t. I’m perfectly OK with some amount of damage and never said otherwise.
You’re the one that has to reconsider their position as it was based on damage where there was none. Has your argument changed?
Yes.
And emergency vehicles. I don’t know why no one else thinks this is a big deal. Do you really want fire trucks and ambulances and people going to the hospital to be blocked? What about regular people? I have to pick up my kids from aftercare mon-friday why would it be a good thing that my kids have to spend who knows how many hours stuck there?
I agree. Please don’t damage property.
Peaceful protest, dialog, websites, YouTube videos, social media posts, pamphlets, books, seminars, lectures, speeches, letter writing campaigns, change.org…
This was a peaceful protest! No one was hurt and nothing was damaged. It also reached a lot more people than a post on social media would and way more than a picket would.
You think they don’t do these other things because you don’t hear about them. That’s why they do this. The other methods no one hears about.
No change has ever happened from purely peaceful protest. If that were effective it wouldn’t be legal.
Destruction of property isn’t peaceful.
It’s a good thing no property was destroyed then
And if it had been would the argument change?
Maybe? But that’s irrelevant. No property was damaged. It was a peaceful protest.
Protestors will almost always allow emergency vehicles through their roadblocks.
People always bring this up, but the reality is they just don’t want protests to cause the most minor of inconveniences for them.
Load of crap. That group Just Stop Oil managed to delay a woman getting her kid to the hospital. And the peices of shit who run it refuse to apologize. It doesn’t matter anyway because when the road is blocked up it still delays everything. Also who the fuck made them god? When did they get permission to just decide for the rest of us who gets to go and who doesn’t? I didn’t vote for them.
Yes people tend to mention when you do shit that hurts people. Maybe there is a fucking reason for it?
Oh look a bloody mind-reader here! Everyone stop we got a guy here who can read the minds of thousands of people across multiple continents across decades. Hey since you are a mind reader what do you think I am thinking about your cavalier attitude towards human life right now?
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Two wrongs make a right? Kinda “logic” I should expect from someone who blocks ambulances.
You can read the comments for yourself. That is if you aren’t too busy making sure ambulances are blocked. You don’t need ESP to read.
Literally in the comments and in the article.
Tu quoque. Logical fallacy. Ding ding ding ding. The mind reader ambulance blocker committed a logical fallacy. Ding ding ding.
In the comments I’m reading, a good half of them know what this protest is about. That’s not no one.
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Even so, it’s just an objective fact that blocking traffic hurts the working poor far more than it hurts the wealthy and powerful high-status people who wield real power in society. It also, at least in the US, just further alienates blue collar people from the Democratic party and the political left, a demographic that they should own, but are losing and continuing to lose precisely because they are so tone deaf. The right does not block traffic, at least not as a tactic in itself, because they are smart enough to know that it just pisses people off. This difference is diagnostic of why the Democrats are steadily losing support from non-college-educated working people of all races.
Dude, these types of people are not working for the democratic party. The democratic party doesn’t want to change anything, which is the issue. That’s why other methods have to be used. Asking nicely and voting doesn’t cause the change that needs to happen. Sure, do it also, but don’t stop where the ruling class tells you to stop.
There hasn’t really been many instance of art getting destroyed. This is legitimate imo, it gets in the news and no real damage is done. Personally, I think it’s not far enough.
If oil companies get their way, whole countries are going to be destroyed, not just paintings.
It’s also plain to see that any form of protest against oil companies is quickly villainized by the media. There’s an agenda at play when you can’t march, stand in traffic or just throw soup at glass.
Relevance?
LOL what? Maybe if by “the media” you mean Fox News?
Wasn’t even about climate change.
To think sustainability in agriculture is not about climate change is rather a narrow definition of climate change.
They were supposedly upset about food security. Yeah this right here is a great example of why these performative protests don’t work. No one can even agree why they did it.
Performative protests are a warning that things aren’t right. And French history has shown a penchant for heavy sharp falling objects to the back of the neck as the next alternative.
Yes French history, a week over two hundred years ago.
That’s the thing about a threat, it doesn’t have to lead to violence, but it is the performative act of violence. And the commitment to do violence or at least suffer the consequences, in this case arrest. That’s what this was. You can understand it or not.
I see. So they made a terrorist threat?
Blocking traffic is pretty shitty though because you’re hurting working people as opposed to the people who have real power and status in society. These are people who depend on hourly wages and often have multiple jobs together with childcare scheduling commitments and the like.
Just wait until they find out how inconvenient widespread environmental catastrophe is.
Which ones? I’ve heard a lot of complaining about people destroying art that was protected and not damaged. The target of this kind of thing isn’t the art, it’s the headlines. They don’t actually want to damage the art, so they purposefully target famous art that is protected. The media will quickly try to minimize that it was protected and lead people to believe they caused actual damage though, so that often gets lost.
Ah yes it is the media’s fault for not providing free advertising for them.
No, the problem is that money decides which issues are important in the first place.
No, it’s societies fault for not doing what we need to do. It’s the medias fault that this gathers attention and makes it an effective and harmless method of protest.
Ah yes “society”. We used to have the devil but then we killed him. Now we are so smart we invented him again.
The Mona Lisa is behind bullet proof glass and everybody knows it. Relax.
What is your way to go about that?
If you aren’t doing anything, what way(s) would you deem acceptable? If you know acceptable ways, why aren’t you following through? Honest if-questions, not meant as assumptions.
Healthy and sustainable food seems to be a decent goal. People should be able to get behind this. So if all the disagreement is about the right approach, where are the people with the right approach, and where are all the people voicing their concern about art supporting them?
Please help me out. It feels as if people are more concerned about pieces of art which they may never see, than about healthy food, the climate, or other major issues which affect everyone.
I get why it puts people off, these points exist. I just wonder what the “right” alternative to these “wrong” approaches is, and wether the critics walk the talk.
Raise money and awareness through non-destructive means, start a program, work on the problem yourselves and hope more people join in. Start a fucking tik-tok challenge, I don’t know, honestly.
But throwing soup at art is just cringey and makes you look weird. No one is going to be on board with that but other soup-throwers. Then you just have a whole group of people travelling around throwing soup at monuments and nobody knows what the fuck your point is, as evidenced by this comment section.
Raising awareness through destructive means is exactly what France is good at, and exactly why they have far more equality than most of the people on the planet
They take no shit
They’re not doing anything except ruining the day of normal people around them. And after they give themselves morale immunity from any responsibility for anything bad that happens.
If they want to protest they should sink yatchs, ground private airplanes and drag billionaires by the hair out of their bunkers and execute them. That would actually be something. But they choose to disturb random working class peasants trying to enjoy a minute for themselves instead of being crushed by capitalism for one pretty moment.
Useless arguments are thrown around like hot garbage here. Of course they won’t do what’s excpected for change because they don’t want change. They want a free pass from any personal responsibility.
No art is touched in these protests. Its like y’all never heard of glass before.