**Authentically Human! Not Written by AI**
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| Monet avec Pomme Purée (New York Times; Letzte Generation, via Getty Images) |
We've all seen the photos in the news several times now: a couple of protestors in a museum, hands Super-Glued to the protective glass, with yet another famous painting doused with soup or oil or paint.
Anger rises in my gullet every time I see this. Most of the paintings we see in museums have great cultural and educational value and, quite often, great beauty. Here are some of the paintings that have been attacked:
- Johannes Vermeer, "Girl with a Pearl Earring" (Netherlands)
- John Constable, "The Hay Wain" (UK)
- Pablo Picasso, "Massacre en Corée" (Spain)
- Claude Monet, "The Artist’s Garden at Giverny" (Sweden)
- Botticelli, "Primavera" (Italy)
- Vincent Van Gogh, "Sunflowers" (US)
- Francisco de Goya, "La Maja Vestida" and "La Maja Desnuda" (Spain)
and so on.
But like beauty, cultural and educational value often lies in the eye of the beholder. For the protestors, clearly the value of the paintings lies only in their utility in helping them raise awareness and spread a message.
What message? It really doesn't matter--it could be anything. What does matter, however, is that these works are being attacked and exploited. Granted, I agree that the protestors' message is important. Climate change is real, and one of the secondary causes is the oil industry. (What's the primary cause? you may ask. Overpopulation—but that's a blog post for a different venue.) And although apparently none of the paintings have been harmed, other than damage to protective glass and frames, the risk is there.
To my mind, the protestors are undercutting their message. Rather than raising awareness of the peril of Big Oil's contribution to climate change, the message becomes one about the peril of activists choosing the wrong way to go about it. Their message is much weakened by this behavior.
At one of the protests, a participant said: "When there’s no food, what use is art? When there’s no water, what use is art?”
One might ask instead, "When there's no art, what use is food and water?" Art is what makes us human; food and water merely make us animals.
Here are a couple of good articles on these protests:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/27/climate-activists-glue-art-trend/
