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.
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…why the need of throwing food at a piece of art…?
or paint, that’s been a thing.
really pisses me off, environmentalists attacking art, of all things. random art didn’t cause environmental issues, and they’re undermining their own message with the sheer absurdity of it.
Whatever object was thrown, aside, i wonder if this is some kind of act attributed to their primitive parts of their brains that command the following: Monke throw poop.
They attacked a pane of bulletproof glass; if destroying art was their objective they wouldn’t have had to walk far.
Are there any examples of these protests that have caused lasting damage? What I’ve seen was very visible but didn’t actually threaten anything.
It’s a weird message for sure but they don’t seem to malicious to me.
The goal is always to get on the news.
But it’s super weird. For example: any of the PETA BS ever worked for most of society? All it does is trigger the extremists while pissing off nearly everyone else.
Are you joking?
Veganism and vegetarianism is massively on the rise and firmly in the mainstream. McDonald’s does a plant based burger ffs.
PETA have even managed to position themselves as a certification agency for “cruelty free”. If getting companies to self-regulate and accept you as the rule maker for that regulation isn’t above your standard of “working” then I don’t know what is.
I’m not usually inclined to conspiracy but I honestly think this group is planted by somebody to make environmental activists look bad.
They aren’t even protesting about (necessarily) environmentalism! It’s crazy the number of people outraged that soup was thrown on glass that was in front of a painting and didn’t even get to the part where it says this is about food security.
I know it’s a minor point and food security is an actual very practical concern and valid reason to protest, but I feel like one of the tenants of a successful protest is very much like advertising : make the target directly relevant to the message. “Art and historical conservation efforts aren’t worth your concern as much as (blank)” feels like it’s a muddy message when the whole point of art culture is that it is kind of frivolous. Quite frankly you could throw anything at a beloved historical conservation peice and make the news even if your reason was “I felt like it”. People are probably gunna treat it as a bare faced stunt for attention because it’s already been done and the response is predictable. Our society wide fascination with historical preservation is immediately hostile to anything that seems to be spontaneous. It’s the opposite of exploiting a weak spot in people’s thinking.
I understand and am sympathetic to their cause but I am pretty sure there’s some property damage or mischief stunt that could have been immediately more effective by being somehow tied more directly to food, convenience culture or contemporary targets.
That just shows why this isn’t an effective form of protest. I’ve seen a lot of comments about how “this gets attention” but fail to see how no one is actually talking about the “point” these protestors were trying to make. Which basically ruins anything the protestors are trying to do as no one focuses on the issues expressed.
What form of protest gets your rubber stamp of approval?
Well the guillotine seems super effective. Start there.
I love you types that add nothing to a conversation except “WhAt dO yOU ApPRoVe???” Like that’s a useful response to the conversation of “is this effective in getting a message across.”
If only you held yourself to the same standard before yet another generic “This isn’t an effective form of protest even though it made the news, and I’m talking about it, and I know what it was about” comment.
Or fuck, even in this reply, where your “useful response” was “you should protest with murder”.
Looks to me like you just didn’t like your opinions challenged, you just wanted to make sure everybody knew what they were.
Of course WE know what this is about. We’re both reading the article (and most likely have a similar view of how important food insecurity is across the globe and in our own countries/states/provinces/cities). I’m not concerned about you or I getting the messaging. I’m question if the general public will get the messaging. The people who don’t know about food insecurity, or food waste, if they get the messaging. Even next door in Germany DW interviewed the communications head of the organization that protested and they couldn’t really point out how this was beneficial for their argument. They talked about wanting access to high quality food, so they mysteriously threw high quality food on the Mona Lisa? Wouldn’t a better protest of the same variety to have been throwing shit food at it? Or maybe blocking deliveries of crappy food to markets?
So here we are, on the internet, having a conversation about the Mona Lisa being hit with pumpkin soup. The messaging isn’t clear from the protestors and the demonstration just goes to show why we need better organization amongst people who realize this is an issue. We need clear messaging to relay to the every man. The person who maybe doesn’t experience it themselves, or who maybe doesn’t see how good insecurity has a wider impact on people and keeping social-economic classes in the same groups.
Challenge my viewpoint, prove to me how this protest has brought attention to their cause that’s meaningful rather than just notoriety to the Mona Lisa (that it didn’t already have), and that the every man is viewing this as a reason to help stop food insecurity.
For-profit, neoliberal media will never fairly cover any protest that may impact the profits of other neoliberals. It doesn’t matter what form the protest takes, nor what the protest is for.
It’s been that way ever since “Occupy Wall St”, when news anchors feigned carefully practised bewilderment and asked "But what are they protesting. Of course if you asked any of the actual protesters, they were happy to make it clear.
So they just didn’t ask.
Measuring any act of protest by metric of “the media covered it in a way that will bring the great unwashed on side” ensures that no protest will ever meet your standard. You may as well advocate that people don’t bother and just politely wait for the end of the world. You won’t even be alone in doing it.
Fortunately, those media companies don’t control every method of communication just yet, so we can discuss it on social media or look it up independently.
What we can’t escape is the endless protest policing, where people complain “that’s not how I would have done it” on social media.
So maybe it’s time for those people to unveil their perfect protest strategy that gets international attention, doesn’t inconvenience anybody, gets fairly covered despite the millions spent to prevent it and doesn’t require 3 wet wipes to fix.
My money is on their big reveal being “do fuck all and try and die of old age before it matters”.
I would argue it’s a slightly effective form… but only if they advertise the point. There’s been plenty of times I’ve seen this for environmentalism, and people start talking about it in the comments. Not completely directly, but it gets them talking. Like when they would super glue their hands to the ground, in one video one of the protestors threw the bottle into a drain. So people started talking about how hypocritical it was because that’s bad for the environment. Which was a small thing, but the conversation was happening.
People used to make fun activists who would throw red paint onto fashion models wearing fur. But over the years, that slowed down because designers stopped using real fur. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it was because they were afraid of getting their stuff ruined, but now most designers won’t use fur for ethical reasons. Because they realize animals don’t need to be bred and killed for their suits.
The only real downside is that it does make them come off as assholes, but also no real way to turn that around. Like black people would do sit ins at restaurants, and a lot of white people hated them for it… but then other white people also got to see them get abused for it. Things like that can help change people’s perspective. With this, they throw it, and then it mostly stops there. They’re just assholes. It gets the conversation going, but not enough, because it just stops at them being assholes.
I agree with everything in your post except them being assholes. What part of this makes them assholes? Nothing was damaged and no one was hurt or inconvenienced, except for maybe a few museum employees who had to clean up a mess. The whole setup for viewing the Mona Lisa causes far more inconvenience than these people did. It’s a tiny painting in a packed room. You can’t really see it anyway.
Although part of it might also just be the classic issue of people not reading that much past the headline. People see “protestors throw soup at Mona Lisa”, and not get much farther than that.
Or more likely that news doesn’t get paid to put it in the headline.
lowhanging psyop spotted
my personal conspiracy theory is that these people are funded, if indirectly, by big oil. in the same way PETA smears the name of vegans, these mfs are designed to make you, the viewer, hate environmentalists.
the worst part? it works
Makes sense, tbh. If you can’t control the opposition, you can instead try to defame them
In the Balkans, whenever people rise in peaceful protest against a corrupt goverment, that particular government sends 50 or so crack heads to join the protests and start demolishing stuff, so that an overwhelming police force can then disperse the legitimate protests. I’ve seen it play out times and times again.
That’s why trade unions in France maintain their own security forces, trained to spot troublemakers or hysterical militants and reign them in. Perhaps is this what makes for successful démonstrations.
Centuries of experience helps.
We do that here in the US too, we might hide it better though.
What a brain-dead form of protesting. It only upsets people and makes no sense.
Bitch, if I flew to fucking France to see the Mona Lisa and you’re up there flinging soup on it, you’re getting a foot in your ass.
Want to raise awareness? Be aware of this. Shithead.
Yeah fuck those starving people I wanna see the tiny painting
I love a good protest … But this isn’t a good protest.
What’s the most important thing?” they shouted. “Art, or right to a healthy and sustainable food?”
Yeah, no. I think in a civilised world we should be able to have both and that sort of argument is weak as fuck.
Destroy all art because it is more important that we conduct research into cot death. Oxygen is more important than art and yet look at you, with your galleries.
It’s infantile posturing of probably well off middle class kids who want their Rosa Parks moment for Instagram clout.
Further to that, attempting to destroy something that essentially belongs to everyone is just going to bring negative press. How about going after something owned by the head of Nestle? No? Is that too difficult and requires too much work?
And what did you do this week to prevent environmental destruction, recycle some sody pop cans?
I mostly agree but I mean it’s not like they were trying to destroy art or suggesting that all art should be destroyed. There’s plenty of unprotected art in the Louvre. In the same room as the Mona Lisa There’s a huge painting on the opposite wall that’s arguably more interesting than whatever view of the Mona Lisa you can get from 6 ft back and they didn’t go after it. They’re trying to get attention, like most protests.
I get that. And I broadly supported the stop oil protests that took a similar form. But I do take objection to the weird value judgement they are making.
What’s worth more, art or sustainable food…
If I wanted to get complex about it I’d highlight the numerous ways in which art and sustainable agriculture have traditionally interwoven through folk practices, but I’m going to keep it simple and say that the sort of false equivalence they just used is the rhetoric of fascism.
In the UK it is frequently used to defy art that may be oppositional to political and corporate interests.
And that’s it, art is, more than anything, a vector for public discussion and protest in its own right.
Their protest and the reason behind it is fine. The daft shit they said during it undermines everything else and could do easily have been avoided with a small amount of thought.
I recently saw someone on Lemmy point out that the UK has an emergency plan to move precious artwork to bunkers in the event of a nuclear attack, but no such plans exist for the people. Paintings can be replaced or remade. People cannot. The planet cannot. There are many things in this world far more valuable than art, in part because life is the source of art.
I’d actually say the reverse.
Our collective learning, as captured in our literature and art, is unique. It’s the result of countless human lives. It is what would allow us to rebuild a society after a nuclear war.
Populations are replaceable. As long as enough people survive, the population will recover. On an individual level, of course, each person is unique but most are unremarkable.
You may find what I’m saying abhorrent, but for the potential success of any post-nuclear society I think it’s more important that knowledge and culture survive than individuals.
I think an important consideration is who gets to decide what knowledge and culture get preserved. For example, I would say that medicine, agriculture, and human language would be much more important to preserve than computer science or economics, but I’m sure someone would disagree.
In general, I think art is very valuable and should be protected when possible (and not just European art), but if the choice is between a painting or a human life… the painting goes every time.
That’s like saying playing with unloaded guns is completely harmless. You don’t do that. All it takes is one accident or a crazed person to make it worse.
You want to protest? Go to the buildings of oil companies or politicians who are the reason for this or have the capability to make a change. The art is entirely irrelevant to this.
The only attention they’ll get is a bad one. And from whom? The same people you are advocating for?
You are talking about it right now.
That means it worked, regardless of how “good” you think it is.
We are talking about the protest, not the subject of the protest.
That’s one of the problem with protest stunts. They get attention but often the attention drowns out the intent.
How would you protest then?
Fair question.
I haven’t protested about this specific issue, but I have done about others. Specifically, the erosion of human rights in the UK.
Here’s a video of a performance protest we made last year:
It’s pretty blunt, it’s about how wealth is used to distort rights and the meanings of language. The full thing took over four hours to read out. We held a talk and a symposium as well as educational visits with schools. I’m a big believer in education as social justice.
Hypothetically then, in their case, I would make art that engaged with the subject. Just like picasso did with Guernica, an image that still resonates the horror of war.
Protesters did shit attention grabbing thing and no one even knows what it was for.
So I guess now regular people will have to put up with security theater
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.
If only there was some incredibly easy and simple way to find out what it was for
Why would I care it’s probably stupid, all these groups have childishly stupid goals like ‘why don’t we just not use oil, I’m sure no one ever though of that, right?’ and ‘force everyone to live the lifestyle I personally happen to prefer’
Their plan always overlooks the fact that total chaos would ensue if anyone ever tried what they’re demanding, if they had anything worthwhile to say they’d be saying it in the relevant places and people would be listening.
I guess if you presuppose the group’s intentions you never have to worry about what they actually say. Kinda like how I’m gonna presuppose that your second paragraph was just complaining about people being noisy or whatever instead of actually reading it.
Of course your going to ignore it, it’s the inconvenient reality ignored by everyone that wants to feel like a hero because they wished for an easy solution to difficult problems
Nah, I’m going to ignore it to try to show you how ignoring what someone says is an awful way to gain an understanding of them
Again?!
Didn’t another group do this exact same thing last year? I believe it was Stop Oil last time.
You’d think they just stop anyone with a thermos or other vessel capable of holding soup.
I believe that they did it to a Van Gogh painting which actually was more note worthy as that was not behind bullet proof glass
Im almost positive this is either the same exact story being posted a year later, either way I distinctly remember the same argument of “it’s behind glass, dumbasses” being mentioned last time.
idiots
It worked. Good for them, no damage was done and the news is talking about the issue
It’s doing more harm than good for the climate cause.
Usually when this happens, the articles forget to mention the glass and the comments are all centered on how stupid the protestors are. Good to see an exception here.
Edit: Never mind. I scrolled down and it’s bad as it always was on reddit.
sigh
It’s a dumb action, and this is from someone that supports direct action. How people are talking about an action is critical: the context matters.
The first thing people are going to ask is “why did you do this?” and the answer needs to make sense. Throwing soup on an oil exec, painting their office, etc – something sparks a conversation in a way you can exploit to further the cause.
“Vandalizing” a famous piece of art not even tangentially related to your cause is just going to make people think you’re an asshole and shuts down that potential for a productive discussion.
Some of the most successful stunts of extinction rebellion over here were painting private jets orange, and my personal favourite declaring a golf course a nature reserve and planting all kinds of indigenous plants there.
Not even the pearl-clutching “but that’s property damage!” types tend to be really mad about that kind of stuff.
Yeah and I’m pretty sure the issue with climate change isn’t a lack of awareness…
Right? Raw shock value is only useful when something isn’t well known. Everyone knows about climate change and has a position.
Great, use “shock value”: but make a worthwhile statement with it too. The goal is to force people to confront an issue, not effortlessly write it off as a childish tantrum and ignore it.
Why is soup the choice rather than dye, ink, or paint?
They’re bringing attention to food insecurity, so their method is… wasting food. Yea that checks out
Yeah that one can of soup in Paris would make such a massive difference to worldwide food insecurity lmao
They knew they couldn’t (probably didn’t want to) damage the painting itself. The Mona Lisa has been behind bullet proof glass since the mid 90s, so it wasnt a secret. So they chose something that was relevant to their cause and they probably (rightly) guessed that soup would make a headline when paint or dye has been done so many times before that it might not.
Climate change is an issue but this is not the best way.
What way would be better?
Actual propaganda, not this shock headline provoker
Why not both? Direct Action gets results.
blockading freeways 👍
The painting, which was behind bulletproof glass, appeared to be undamaged.
This is why education is important.
eh idk. they probably knew about it. they wanted headlines, not damage, and they got them
The painting, which was behind bulletproof glass, appeared to be undamaged.
Wow, who would’ve guessed.
It just appeared to be undamaged.
Who knows, there might be some soup doing quantum tunnelling and plopping itself right in-between the canvas and the paint.Well, they never said it was soup proof glass.
It’s actually a fair point. Bullets move in straight lines. Liquids splatter and drip. The painting might not be safe from all directions.
Now we know. Every article from now on has to call it bullet- and soupproof glass. It is the law.
Almost like the spectacle is the point, and now people are talking about it
They did studies that demonstrated this kind of thing can make political progress more difficult because politicians don’t want to look like they’re weak to it and voters don’t want to be associated with it.
But they, and I guess you, don’t really care, it’s not about actually making positive change it’s about feeling like a hero and getting followers on social media.
yeah, they really advanced environmentalism with this dumb shit. 🙄
It’s bulletproof not soupproof.
Also, it’s not the real Mona Lisa.
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I suspect the protesters knew about this.
If it’s anything like the other times, that’s exactly why they targeted it instead of something unprotected. They aren’t trying to destroy art, they’re trying to make a statement.
