Environmental activists from the Just Stop Oil movement threw tomato soup at Van Gogh’s masterpiece Sunflowers at the National Gallery on Friday, causing only minor damage to the frame – a spectacular new installment in a month of action in London.
• Also read: Vandalized artworks in museums: precedents
• Also read: Two environmental activists stick to the frame of a Van Gogh in London
Two activists threw the contents of two soup cans at the work, worth over $84 million, according to press images released by the movement demanding an immediate halt to all new oil or gas projects in the UK.
Police “were quickly on the scene at the National Gallery this morning after two protesters threw a substance at a painting and then pinned it to a wall,” Scotland Yard said in a statement. They were arrested specifically for “humiliation”.
The museum said that two people “appeared to be glued to the wall next to Van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1888)” and “threw a red substance — which appears to be tomato soup — at the painting.”
The frame has “slight damage,” but the painting is “intact,” the National Gallery assured.
This new stunt by the group, which has already targeted works of art in the past, is part of a series of actions that began in the British capital in early October, in which they notably blocked streets on several occasions.
A video by Guardian environment reporter Damien Gayle, which was widely retweeted by environmental activists, shows two young women wearing T-shirts that read “Just Stop Oil” spilling the contents of two cans of canned soup onto the artwork.
After being glued to a wall, one of them starts: “What is worth more, art or life?”.
“Do you care more about protecting a painting than protecting our planet and its people?” she asked.
“Human creativity and ingenuity are exhibited in this museum, but our legacy is diminished because our government is not acting on the climate and the cost of living,” Just Stop noted. Oil on Twitter, explaining that the group’s approach was to “select the life of art.”
“The cost of living crisis comes from fossil fuels – daily living has become unaffordable for millions of families who are freezing and starving – they can’t even afford to buy a can of soup,” said Phoebe Plummer, a 21-year-old activist quoted in a statement by the movement.
“At the same time” “people are dying” because of “fires and droughts caused by climate change,” she argued. “We can’t afford new oil and gas projects,” they would “take everything away.”
The “Sunflowers” on display in the National Gallery were acquired by the museum in 1924, according to the museum’s website.
In total, Van Gogh created seven versions of the “Sunflowers”, five of which are on display in museums.
One of these, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, said it was “closely monitoring developments” that could affect its own security measures.
Dutch Special Counsel Arthur Brand, nicknamed “the Indiana Jones of the art world,” condemned Just Stop Oil’s action.
“There are hundreds of ways to draw attention to climate issues. It shouldn’t be one of them,” he said.
Just Stop Oil members commemorate the suffragette movement, which attacked artworks to win women’s suffrage in the early 20th century.
In support of five of their jailed comrades, members of the group dropped orange paint and blocked traffic outside Scotland Yard’s headquarters in London on Friday. According to the police, 24 people were arrested.