Van Gogh Painting UK climate activists arrested after throwing tomato soup on Van Gogh's painting
London/IBNS: Two women members of climate campaign group Just Stop Oil, an organization protesting fossil fuel extraction in Britain, were arrested after they entered the National Gallery in London and threw two cans of tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting “Sunflowers” on Friday.
The painting is one of the six surviving images of sunflowers created by Vincent van Gogh.
The soup was dripping down the glass frame of the painting which the gallery said was unharmed barring minor damages.
In room 43, the protestors removed their jackets to reveal Just Stop Oil t-shirts. The pair in their early twenties then smeared their hand with glue and stuck themselves to the wall beneath the painting.
“What is worth more art, or life?” said one activist, Phoebe Plummer, 21, from London. She was accompanied by 20-year-old Anna Holland from Newcastle.
“Is it worth more than food? More than justice? Are you concerned about protecting a painting or about protecting our planet and people?”.
“The cost-of-living crisis is part of the cost of the oil crisis. Fuel is unaffordable to millions of cold, hungry families. They can’t even afford to heat a tin of soup,” they said.
The action grabbed the attention of the world and netizens expressed concern for the painting’s condition. The National Gallery said in an email statement that the painting was not harmed aside from some “minor damage to the frame”.
The painting was cleaned and put back on display on Friday afternoon.
For the past two weeks, the group has been staging sit-down protests on roads around central London, enraging drivers and commuters.
Mel Carrington, a spokesperson for Just Stop Oil, said in a telephone interview to a media that the group’s intention was to generate publicity and to create and to debate around the climate crisis and the actions needed to stop it.
"Van Gogh’s Sunflowers had nothing to do with climate change. It was 'an iconic painting, by an iconic painter' and an attack on it would generate headlines. But the choice of soup was more symbolic," she added.
The pair was charged for their action on Friday, while the third was charged over paint sprayed on a rotating sign at the Metropolitan Police’s Headquarters in central London.
The three women pleaded not guilty to the charges at a London court during two hearings on Saturday.
Police said that they made some arrests in relation to the protests by the group on Friday.
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