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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
No art is touched in these protests. Its like y’all never heard of glass before.
The Mona Lisa is behind bullet proof glass and everybody knows it. Relax.
I mean, I think it’s dumb how they’re going about doing it, and leads a general public to dislike them more than side with them, but in cases like this, it’s more of a dumb inconvenience to the artwork…and a waste of soup. Nothing damaging.
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.
You have no proof of the claim that this was by design.
You have no way to prevent future idiots from targeting any random thing.
You think articles are going to be the big thing but social media is not. So they are at the behest of whatever is written about them instead of controlling the narrative and that somehow the appropriate route. Going to think group through soup on the Mona Lisa is probably not going to win you a lot of favors. Two years ago a different group of idiots tried the exact same thing. I don’t remember a single positive thing being said about them. And I haven’t seen a single positive thing about this group either. I feel like they’re hurting their message not helping their message.
I foresee these places putting up a replica of the paintings and not the paintings anymore. Because there’s far too much risk.
The proof is they hit the fucking Mona Lisa. Everyone knows there’s glass in front. Even if they somehow didn’t know, they would by the time the get up to it and could have changed plans. It wasn’t an accident that glass was “in the way” of the painting. How could anyone think it was?
Everyone writes social media posts, and they go no where. I’m not saying this will cause anything to happen, but it got a lot more eyeballs on it than some tweet would, which would at best be seen by the people looking for that anyway.
Lol. What would be the point of going then. The pictures are public domain and viewable online. They only exist to display the real thing, and again nothing was damaged. Hell, the Mona Lisa has been stolen before and it’s still on public display. Why would a little soup on the glass case make them change?
You seem to not have thought about this at all. Your thinking with emotion or something and not reason. Social media posts don’t get anyone’s attention outside the group that already agrees, these people caused no damage, and museums don’t exist for replicas. Calm down.
Found the lib! You should educate yourself on why you like every other civil rights movement except for this one! You really think people who fought for rights in the past never got in the way? That this is new?
They never said they ‘like every other civil rights movement except for this one.’
You did.
Isn’t that a fair assumption to make? Are there people that trash talk civil rights movements of the past or something?
Such a weird response. lol. Why would that need to have been said?
Re-read my comment and try to understand it this time.
“Found the lib”? This is Lemmy. We’re all libs.
A fair amount of people here are actually very much not liberal and dislike liberals heavily. I’m not sure what the right label is (Marxist perhaps) but they use “libs” just like the far right does.
If you look up the definition/political ideology of liberalism vs socialism, vs communism, they’re all significantly different.
I don’t think Marxist would be the right term. That’d be like calling all liberals followers of Adam Smith. That is to say, it’s helpful to know the history of your political ideology but it’s not entirely necessary
So socialist? Or communist? I hear Marxist a lot here but that is a good point, it’s about the only one I’ve seen named after one guy.
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So socialist? Or communist? I hear Marxist a lot here but that is a good point, it’s about the only one I’ve seen named after one guy.