Visitors at Louvre look on in shock as Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece attacked by environmental protesters
Two environmental protesters have hurled soup on to the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris, calling for “healthy and sustainable food”. The painting, which was behind bulletproof glass, appeared to be undamaged.
Gallery visitors looked on in shock as two women threw the yellow-coloured soup before climbing under the barrier in front of the work and flanking the splattered painting, their right hands held up in a salute-like gesture.
One of the two activists removed her jacket to reveal a white T-shirt bearing the slogan of the environmental activist group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) in black letters.
I really hate the destruction or attempted destruction of art in order to bring awareness to a social cause. I get in this case the painting is highly protected,
but there have been plenty of other instances where this has happened to other art where that wasn’t the case.Not only are you a self-entitled piece of shit for tying to destroy something that is on display for public enjoyment, but you are virtually guaranteeing that anybody who didn’t already agree with you won’t take you seriously because you are acting like such a piece of shit.
Seriously, there are a lot of legitimate reasons for civil disobedience and public protest. This is not the way to go about that, and if you think it is then fuck you in particular.
Edit: I didn’t think this was going to be such a divisive issue. After some further research I am retracting my earlier statement about other art being damaged in these protests because I don’t see much evidence for that after all. It seems like these protestors are often targeting art they know will get maximum media exposure without causing lasting damage.
HOWEVER, I still think this type of action is counterproductive when you are trying to, hopefully, win over people that either do not support or are not aware of your message. Collective action is an effective means to make change in society. I am, again, not disputing that. I just think that if the goal is to gain broad support for your cause you need to choose targets that are more representative of that cause; rather than art, which does get media exposure, but which ultimately serves to obfuscate or overshadow the true purpose behind your protest. Being savvy about your target audience goes further and deeper into the social zeitgeist than simply getting headlines for being angsty.
There hasn’t really been many instance of art getting destroyed. This is legitimate imo, it gets in the news and no real damage is done. Personally, I think it’s not far enough.
If oil companies get their way, whole countries are going to be destroyed, not just paintings.
It’s also plain to see that any form of protest against oil companies is quickly villainized by the media. There’s an agenda at play when you can’t march, stand in traffic or just throw soup at glass.
Wasn’t even about climate change.
To think sustainability in agriculture is not about climate change is rather a narrow definition of climate change.
They were supposedly upset about food security. Yeah this right here is a great example of why these performative protests don’t work. No one can even agree why they did it.
Performative protests are a warning that things aren’t right. And French history has shown a penchant for heavy sharp falling objects to the back of the neck as the next alternative.
Yes French history, a week over two hundred years ago.
That’s the thing about a threat, it doesn’t have to lead to violence, but it is the performative act of violence. And the commitment to do violence or at least suffer the consequences, in this case arrest. That’s what this was. You can understand it or not.
This is not the way to go about that
What is your way to go about that?
If you aren’t doing anything, what way(s) would you deem acceptable? If you know acceptable ways, why aren’t you following through? Honest if-questions, not meant as assumptions.
Healthy and sustainable food seems to be a decent goal. People should be able to get behind this. So if all the disagreement is about the right approach, where are the people with the right approach, and where are all the people voicing their concern about art supporting them?
Please help me out. It feels as if people are more concerned about pieces of art which they may never see, than about healthy food, the climate, or other major issues which affect everyone.
I get why it puts people off, these points exist. I just wonder what the “right” alternative to these “wrong” approaches is, and wether the critics walk the talk.
Raise money and awareness through non-destructive means, start a program, work on the problem yourselves and hope more people join in. Start a fucking tik-tok challenge, I don’t know, honestly.
But throwing soup at art is just cringey and makes you look weird. No one is going to be on board with that but other soup-throwers. Then you just have a whole group of people travelling around throwing soup at monuments and nobody knows what the fuck your point is, as evidenced by this comment section.
Raising awareness through destructive means is exactly what France is good at, and exactly why they have far more equality than most of the people on the planet
They take no shit
What is your way to go about that?
If you aren’t doing anything, what way(s) would you deem acceptable?
They’re not doing anything except ruining the day of normal people around them. And after they give themselves morale immunity from any responsibility for anything bad that happens.
If they want to protest they should sink yatchs, ground private airplanes and drag billionaires by the hair out of their bunkers and execute them. That would actually be something. But they choose to disturb random working class peasants trying to enjoy a minute for themselves instead of being crushed by capitalism for one pretty moment.
Useless arguments are thrown around like hot garbage here. Of course they won’t do what’s excpected for change because they don’t want change. They want a free pass from any personal responsibility.
No art is touched in these protests. Its like y’all never heard of glass before.
You nailed it. I’ve never heard of this group before, but out of principal I don’t support them. You’re a better ways to get attention. This is a kin to a child during a temper tantrum, destroying things to get attention.
I love a good protest … But this isn’t a good protest.
What’s the most important thing?” they shouted. “Art, or right to a healthy and sustainable food?”
Yeah, no. I think in a civilised world we should be able to have both and that sort of argument is weak as fuck.
Destroy all art because it is more important that we conduct research into cot death. Oxygen is more important than art and yet look at you, with your galleries.
It’s infantile posturing of probably well off middle class kids who want their Rosa Parks moment for Instagram clout.
Further to that, attempting to destroy something that essentially belongs to everyone is just going to bring negative press. How about going after something owned by the head of Nestle? No? Is that too difficult and requires too much work?
And what did you do this week to prevent environmental destruction, recycle some sody pop cans?
You are talking about it right now.
That means it worked, regardless of how “good” you think it is.
We are talking about the protest, not the subject of the protest.
That’s one of the problem with protest stunts. They get attention but often the attention drowns out the intent.
How would you protest then?
Fair question.
I haven’t protested about this specific issue, but I have done about others. Specifically, the erosion of human rights in the UK.
Here’s a video of a performance protest we made last year:
It’s pretty blunt, it’s about how wealth is used to distort rights and the meanings of language. The full thing took over four hours to read out. We held a talk and a symposium as well as educational visits with schools. I’m a big believer in education as social justice.
Hypothetically then, in their case, I would make art that engaged with the subject. Just like picasso did with Guernica, an image that still resonates the horror of war.
That sure will encourage work on environmental issues. /s
It will make the climate crisis be covered in headlines and make it harder to ignore. This IS a legitimate form of protest. They didn’t do any harm and brought attention to their cause.
They weren’t doing it for the climate crisis.
It will make the climate crisis be covered in headlines and make it harder to ignore
No it won’t
This IS a legitimate form of protest.
NO, it isn’t
you are talking about them. Therefore protest worked. Therefore it was a protest.
I can get people to talk about me by taking a dump in public that isn’t the same as listening to what I have to say.
420 million people a year defecate in public, so unfortunately not.
Real public not in the freaken woods. As in people around and seeing it. Jesus.
TIL wood are “fake public”
PS, not a lot of woods in the middle of New Delhi. Or here in Brooklyn, where I saw an unhoused person, taking a crap in the street the other day.
They tried to destroy a cultural icon. That’s the only topic worth talking about.
No, they didn’t. They knew it was behind the bullet proof glass and would not be harmed. They did this to draw attention to a cause. It worked.
Half of the comments here don’t even know what cause it was for. You know you are supposed to learn by kindergarten that there is a difference between good attention and bad attention. Making a scene is easy but ineffective the vast majority of the time. Convincing people is difficult but it is the only way to get long term results.
You must have met people like this in your life. Someone completely unable to grasp that there are others around them and they got their own needs and wants. Does that person care? No. They didn’t get what they want so now everyone has to suffer.
Even if I agreed with your premise (which I don’t) I think it pretty silly to use a small niche internet comment forum as a gauge for saying this didn’t work, when it’s plastered on headlines around the world. And you’re already admitting that it did work, now you’re just debating it’s effectiveness. And that’s not the point. 
They knew it, huh. Sounds like an admission of guilt.
the Mona Lisa is behind several centimeters of glass. they have absolutely no way to date it with soup.
You know why the glass is there? Because some lunatic tried to throw pait at it. You can’t justify the act because it’s guarded against it. It’s like saying it’s OK to to launch a missle at me because you know I have an interceptor system.
Well we disagree. I think protests qua protests are interesting to talk about, same for climate protests, civil rights, the role of art, the role of art conservation, and even soup is pretty interesting.
Couldn’t have just used any of the socially acceptable ways to protest? This is France ffs, they are the world leaders in organizing a protest. You piss the French off and you got a march on your hands.
there are no socially acceptable ways to protest - that is the definition of protest.
In the end, I think it’s no different than religious fanatics destroying part of their culture because they disagree with it. They prove nothing. They accomplish nothing.
Lmao no they didnt, it has been behind glass for almost 2 decades, facts dont care about your feelings.
The only legitimate forms of protest are ones that are easily ignored, right?
This is easily ignored. Everyone will forget about it in a few weeks and nothing will change
Put a million people in the streets and I’ll notice. Take out a painting and you’re a vandal :::
No one damaged any paintings
Funnily enough this has been the most successful form of environmental activism to this day
dont put /s, it ruins the joke
THROW PIES AT THE RICH! Not art. The rich.
Ok ok ok, I’ll set aside pies for the rich… But can I also throw soup at activists?
…why the need of throwing food at a piece of art…?
or paint, that’s been a thing.
really pisses me off, environmentalists attacking art, of all things. random art didn’t cause environmental issues, and they’re undermining their own message with the sheer absurdity of it.
They attacked a pane of bulletproof glass; if destroying art was their objective they wouldn’t have had to walk far.
Are there any examples of these protests that have caused lasting damage? What I’ve seen was very visible but didn’t actually threaten anything.
It’s a weird message for sure but they don’t seem to malicious to me.
The goal is always to get on the news.
But it’s super weird. For example: any of the PETA BS ever worked for most of society? All it does is trigger the extremists while pissing off nearly everyone else.
Are you joking?
Veganism and vegetarianism is massively on the rise and firmly in the mainstream. McDonald’s does a plant based burger ffs.
PETA have even managed to position themselves as a certification agency for “cruelty free”. If getting companies to self-regulate and accept you as the rule maker for that regulation isn’t above your standard of “working” then I don’t know what is.
Whatever object was thrown, aside, i wonder if this is some kind of act attributed to their primitive parts of their brains that command the following: Monke throw poop.
Anyone else think of the Mona Lisa case from Glass Onion?
Possibly why it was chosen?
The Mona Lisa is So Hot right now
Protesters did shit attention grabbing thing and no one even knows what it was for.
So I guess now regular people will have to put up with security theater
One of the two activists removed her jacket to reveal a white T-shirt bearing the slogan of the environmental activist group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) in black letters.
If only there was some incredibly easy and simple way to find out what it was for
Why would I care it’s probably stupid, all these groups have childishly stupid goals like ‘why don’t we just not use oil, I’m sure no one ever though of that, right?’ and ‘force everyone to live the lifestyle I personally happen to prefer’
Their plan always overlooks the fact that total chaos would ensue if anyone ever tried what they’re demanding, if they had anything worthwhile to say they’d be saying it in the relevant places and people would be listening.
I guess if you presuppose the group’s intentions you never have to worry about what they actually say. Kinda like how I’m gonna presuppose that your second paragraph was just complaining about people being noisy or whatever instead of actually reading it.
Of course your going to ignore it, it’s the inconvenient reality ignored by everyone that wants to feel like a hero because they wished for an easy solution to difficult problems
Nah, I’m going to ignore it to try to show you how ignoring what someone says is an awful way to gain an understanding of them
Why is soup the choice rather than dye, ink, or paint?
They knew they couldn’t (probably didn’t want to) damage the painting itself. The Mona Lisa has been behind bullet proof glass since the mid 90s, so it wasnt a secret. So they chose something that was relevant to their cause and they probably (rightly) guessed that soup would make a headline when paint or dye has been done so many times before that it might not.
They’re bringing attention to food insecurity, so their method is… wasting food. Yea that checks out
Yeah that one can of soup in Paris would make such a massive difference to worldwide food insecurity lmao
There’s three types of protestors in the world:
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Cause minimal, non serious disruption. Spread the message without pissing people off, because that’ll make people more receptive to joining you.
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Cause serious disruptions, even if it pisses people off, because it brings attention to the issue makes it impossible to ignore.
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Bring attention to an issue at all costs by any means necessary, even if it makes the issue worse or has absolutely nothing to do with the issue. Be an asshole to make people listen.
There’s a valid argument that without 2, people won’t take something seriously, and mild inconveniences are the whole point of nonviolent protest. It gets a bit morally grey when it would do something like prevent an ambulance from operating though. I don’t think anyone who normally waves that away would feel the same if it resulted in the death of a loved one.
And 3 is just clout chasers imo, like in this situation. I can’t take someone protesting food insecurity seriously if they’re wasting food to do so.
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Climate change is an issue but this is not the best way.
What way would be better?
Actual propaganda, not this shock headline provoker
Why not both? Direct Action gets results.
I can’t wait to go to my old high school’s student art show and throw soup on alllllll the art! You know, because food.
God damned soup nazis
idiots
The painting, which was behind bulletproof glass, appeared to be undamaged.
This is why education is important.
eh idk. they probably knew about it. they wanted headlines, not damage, and they got them
“Our farming system is sick. Our farmers are dying at work.”
“… And WE are wasting the food that the farmers died for.”, while at the same time, turning the world towards destruction of all testaments of technology of the previous era.
Bitch, if I flew to fucking France to see the Mona Lisa and you’re up there flinging soup on it, you’re getting a foot in your ass.
Want to raise awareness? Be aware of this. Shithead.
Yeah fuck those starving people I wanna see the tiny painting
