Those blue-haired people decorating the world’s art with stewed vegetables owe the rest of us an apology. Yes, I know the paintings have cleaned up all right. I am aware they were only off the wall for a day or two. But that doesn’t excuse unleashing the dumbest discourse to hit the planet since someone suggested Nigella Lawson genuinely couldn’t pronounce “microwave”.
You will already know about the Just Stop Oil protests. Way back in May someone threw a piece of cake at the Mona Lisa. Others glued themselves to Botticelli’s Primavera or spray-painted slogans under a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. What really got the gammons roasting was a soup-based assault on Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London earlier this month. Since then mashed potato has landed on a Monet in Germany and — in a slightly different category — chocolate cake has found its way to the waxwork of King Charles in Madam Tussauds in London.
More than a few supporters will have rolled their eyes at the stunt
The protesters will have argued their culinary adventures have got the world talking. This is undoubtedly true. Unfortunately, too little of the chatter has been worth the expense of oxygen. In the UK there was, of course, a great deal of wishful thinking on the matter of class. Before the various perpetrators’ names had even been released, one sensed the mid-market tabloids and right-wing weeklies yearning to discover they were privately educated. At time of writing, the newly class-conscious publications were ripe with “rumours” about the opulence of the protesters’ early schooling, but precious little has been confirmed. Does it really matter if that fellow gluing himself to a Van Dyck is Lord Chinless-Polostick of Harrow and Balliol? Would it be better or worse if the person decorating a Lichtenstein with spaghetti hoops had emerged from a Glaswegian comprehensive?
You got a lot of this when those Animal Rebellion protesters gushed a few litres of milk on the floor of Harrods food hall. It is certainly true that modestly paid workers will be the ones cleaning up the mess. It is less clear whether they will much care where the protesters sat their A-levels. Just rejoice that British Blowhardia is now more eager to demonise the wealthy than the much-derided Lumpenproletariat. That counts as progress. We will win the Spectator over to Maoism yet.
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Another line of baloney argued the protesters were “only hurting their own cause”. Were they really? The Sunflower Two and Die Monet Zwei were certainly not offering great advertisements for themselves. More than a few supporters will have rolled their eyes at the stunt. Many of those would prefer the broth guerrillas glued themselves to some object more directly connected with depletion of the earth’s resources. It seems, nonetheless, enormously unlikely that anyone inclined to alter their consumption habits, join a march or lobby their member of parliament will change their mind because the Fourth Earl of Mugglesby has emptied a tin of meatballs on The Haywain. There is evidence to support this counterargument. Colin Davis, professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Bristol, has carried out extensive studies on the relationship between attitudes to activists and to the cause itself. “Experimental manipulations that reduced support for the protesters had no impact on support for the demands of those protesters,” he wrote in This Week. “We’ve replicated this finding across a range of different types of nonviolent protest, including protests about racial justice, abortion rights and climate change.”
Not all of the empty discourse came from those opposed to the coating of impressionist masterpieces in cock-a-leekie. The protesters’ own arguments — and those following up on social media — are often couched in the weariest class of tendentious whataboutery. “We are in a climate catastrophe,” the German protesters, now cemented beneath both Monet and dripping potato, bellowed at their camera. “And all you are afraid of is tomato soup or mashed potatoes on a painting.” What is the German for strawman? I can assure you, madam, the list of things I’m scared of extends far beyond that short list. I am concerned about climate change. I am also worried the current wave of protests may eventually lead to a work of art being pointlessly mutilated. That is, indeed, a small thing when set beside the looming threat of mass extinction, but, until we are all swept away in the coming flood, humans will remain capable of fretting about trivialities, mid-level concerns and existential cataclysms.
[ Just Stop Oil activists throw tomato soup at Van Gogh’s SunflowersOpens in new window ]
It is over a hundred years since suffragette Mary Richardson slashed Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus with a meat chopper and declared: “You can get another picture, but you cannot get a life, as they are killing Mrs Pankhurst.” Votes for woman were achieved. The painting was repaired. The discourse was undoubtedly unbearable. On we go. It’s what Van Gogh would have wanted. Or so someone on Twitter claimed.
