Just Stop Oil protesters have been arrested after smashing the glass covering a Diego Velázquez painting at the National Gallery in London, as police detained dozens of others who blocked Whitehall.
Two activists targeted the glass on the Rokeby Venus painting with safety hammers before they were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage.
The artwork, which was painted by Velázquez in the 1600s, was slashed by the suffragette Mary Richardson in 1914. One of those involved on Monday said: “Women did not get the vote by voting; it is time for deeds not words.”
The Metropolitan police said at least 40 activists who were “slow marching” in Whitehall were also detained and that the road was clear after traffic was stopped for a brief period.
These are essentially publicity stunts, right? They don’t think destroying art will decrease carbon emissions somehow?
Those actions show very clearly that our society cares about damage to paintings more than the destruction of the planet.
That’s what they’re supposed to show.
Best comment so far. Very well said.
I don’t necessarily agree that that is what’s displayed here. People care about the environment they do but that’s not the same as saying we don’t want people slashing paintings for no reason we can have both.
It’s a completely ridiculous statement to suggest that you can only have one or the other and that in order to save the planet we have to destroy artwork.
OK, but there’s a big difference in the reaction of the people.
They react with anger and “this needs to be stopped, punish those responsible harshly” to slashing paintings, and with resignation or indifference to the actions that destroy the planet. “Oh well, nothing we can do”
Then maybe a better way to think about it for you would be like this:
Why should we have nice things when we haven’t even done the basics? if you give yior kid dessert before dinner, they probably aren’t even gonna eat their dinner - people are mammals were naturally lazy.
So what can we do to help it? Not have nice things until were not actively killing ourselves
But the planet contains paintings. Seems more like it shows humans are very bad at long term thinking.
No people just realize these people are morons. It has nothing to do with the destruction of the planet.
It is very clearly about publicity. You can’t get any massage across unless you get someone’s attention in the first place.
In this case, they are playing on the link back to the suffragettes.
Seems to me like they’re getting a net negative message across since they’re seen more as nuts. But I hope someone there has done the sociology analysis to see if it’s actually a net positive or negative impact on their cause.
There have been studies on this kind of thing. I don’t have the links to hand, but the upshot from the ones that I have seen IIRC is that it doesn’t generally cause many people to actually change their views from positive to negative or vice versa, but it does keep the issue in the news.
Of course, in the wider perspective, no protests of this kind are ever going to work alone, but then that’s not the idea. They are never going to be happening alone either: there are always going to legal challenges, political movements, consumer pressure, boycotts and so on and so on alongside. The question is, which ones drive which others? Which wouldn’t happen without the others?
I would do anything to stop the climate catastrophe at this point. Good for them.
But if what they’re doing has a net negative perception to the cause, they’re hurting our chances of minimizing global warming, not helping it.
We are in a net negative situation.
Wdym? An action like this will either help or hurt their cause in aggregate.
No art was harmed in the making of this
There’s always a risk, art is very delicate.
Honestly the artists would be on their side
Clairvoyant are you?
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As far as I can tell they don’t have a cohesive goal. In theory yeah they are publicity stunts, but so what? No one really disagrees with them. Most members of the public do agree that climate change is a problem, the issue is corporations and governments.
That’s unfair. Our well paid leaders don’t have a cohesive plan. Let’s hold them to that standard and not the protesters who are actually worried about the future.