Art under attack

Protest group Just Stop Oil has mounted a series of high-profile protests to end UK government approval for exploring, developing and producing fossil fuels.

Environmental protesters threw tomato soup over one of Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” paintings at London’s National Gallery in October last week, in the latest “direct-action” stunt targeting works of art.

The gallery in Trafalgar Square said the protesters caused “minor damage to the frame but the painting is unharmed”. The painting went back on display a few hours after the attack.

Protest group Just Stop Oil, which was behind the action, wants to end UK government approval for exploring, developing and producing fossil fuels, and has mounted a series of high-profile protests.

London’s Metropolitan Police said officers arrested two protesters from the organisation for criminal damage and aggravated trespass after they “threw a substance” at the painting in the gallery and glued themselves to a wall, just after 11 am (1000 GMT).

Police added they had unglued the protesters and taken them to a central London police station.

A video posted on Twitter by the Guardian newspaper’s environment correspondent Damien Gayle and retweeted by the eco-activism group shows two young women wearing T-shirts bearing the slogan “Just Stop Oil” lobbing cans of soup at the iconic painting.

After glueing themselves to the wall, one of the activists shouts: “What is worth more, art or life?”

“Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?” she asks.

In the video, someone can be heard yelling “oh my God” as the soup hits the canvas and another person shouts “security!” while soup drips from the frame onto the floor.

Just Stop Oil said in a statement its activists threw two cans of Heinz Tomato soup over the painting to demand the UK government halt all new oil and gas projects.

It later tweeted: “Keep giving us new oil and gas, and you will keep getting soup.”

The activist group said the painting has an estimated value of $84.2 million.

The National Gallery says on its website the signed painting from 1888 was acquired by the gallery in 1924.

Van Gogh created seven versions of “Sunflowers” in total and five are on public display in museums and galleries across the world.

One of those — the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam — said it was keeping “a close eye on developments” that might affect its own security measures.

Well-known Dutch ‘art detective’ Arthur Brand, dubbed the “Indiana Jones of the Art World” for recovering famous artworks, condemned the attack.

“There are hundreds of ways to achieve attention for the climate problems. This should not be one of them,” he said.

The attack came a week after Britain’s interior minister Suella Braverman issued a threat to direct-action climate protesters, accusing them of using “guerrilla tactics” to bring “chaos and misery” to the public.

“Whether you’re Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain or Extinction Rebellion, you cross a line when you break the law — and that’s why we’ll keep putting you behind bars,” she said.

Just Stop Oil has previously targeted several other famous paintings with glue attacks.

In June, two activists glued their hands to the frame of Van Gogh’s painting “Peach Trees in Blossom” at the Courtauld Gallery in London.

In July, supporters glued their hands to the frame of British painter John Constable’s “The Hay Wain” at the National Gallery.

They first taped over the canvas with a “reimagined version” of the bucolic scene, showing the landscape covered in pollution, dotted with wildfires and overflown by aircraft.

In the same month, they glued themselves to a full-scale copy of Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” at the Royal Academy in London.

In recent days, Just Stop Oil has held multiple protests blocking major roads.

Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said of the protests that he was “frustrated so many officers are being taken away from tackling issues that matter most to communities”.

Last month, police arrested 24 on suspicion of conspiracy to commit criminal damage and wilful obstruction of the highway after a Just Stop Oil demonstration outside New Scotland Yard, the Met’s headquarters.

An activist sprayed orange paint at the force’s sign there as others blocked the road outside.

Masterpieces targeted by vandals

Here are some other cases of artworks being attacked:

Custard pie for Mona Lisa

Leonardo da Vinci’s beloved Mona Lisa had a custard pie thrown in her face at the Louvre museum in Paris in May but the artwork’s thick bulletproof case ensured she came to no harm.

Her 36-year-old attacker said he was taking aim at artists who are not focusing enough on “the planet”.

She has been behind glass since a Bolivian man threw a rock at her in December 1956, damaging her left elbow.

In 2009, a woman threw an empty teacup at the painting, which slightly scratched the case.

Banksy murals vandalised

Celebrated British street artist Banksy has had several of his iconic murals vandalised around the world.

In August 2021, a piece featuring a rodent sipping a cocktail in a sun lounger, part of his “Great British Spraycation” series, was smeared in white paint shortly after he left it on a wall in Suffolk.

A year earlier, a Valentine’s Day work showing a young girl firing a slingshot of flowers was defaced after appearing on a building in western England.

Ivan the Terrible ripped

In May 2018 a Russian builder attacked a work by 19-century artist Ilya Repin of the 16th-century tsar known as Ivan the Terrible, ripping it in three places.

The man used part of a security barrier at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery to break the glass covering the painting.

He said the painting, which depicts Russia’s first tsar killing his son, was “a lie”.

He was sent to a penal colony for two and a half years.

Delacroix defaced

In February 2013, a woman defaced Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People”, one of France’s most iconic paintings, with a black marker at a provincial satellite of the Louvre, in the northern French city of Lens.

Her inscription, “AE911”, was a reference to conspiracy theories swirling around the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. She was given an eight-month suspended prison sentence.

Indelible ink on Rothko

In October 2012, a Polish artist scrawled his name and a slogan advertising his own artistic manifesto in indelible ink on US artist Mark Rothko’s 1958 painting “Black on Maroon” in Britain’s Tate Modern gallery.

Conservation experts said it took nine months of microscopic analysis to find a chemical solvent that could dissolve the ink, which had in some areas soaked through to the back of the canvas.

The man was given a two-year jail term for the attack.

Red lipstick on Twombly canvas

In July 2007, a Cambodian artist was arrested after planting a lipstick-infused kiss on a panel of US artist Cy Twombly’s Tryptych “Phaedrus”, in a contemporary art museum in the southern French town of Avignon.

She was fined over the kiss mark on the pure white canvas and ordered to pay for the restoration.

She defended it as “an act of love”.

Monet bridge fisted

In October 2007, a group of drunken revellers broke into the Musee d’Orsay museum in Paris during the night and attack a work by Impressionist master Claude Monet.

One of them stuck a fist in “The Argenteuil bridge” leaving a hole nearly four inches long.

Petrol on van der Helst

In June 2006, a known art vandal sprayed Bartholomeus van der Helst’s “Celebration of the Peace of Münster” in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam with lighter fluid and attempted to set fire to it but causes only minor damage.

In 1990 the museum’s best-known painting, Rembrandt’s “Nightwatch” (1642), was sprayed with hydrochloric acid but only the varnish layer was damaged. AFP