I feel like a van Gogh painting was a poorly picked target but also think van Gogh himself would approve.
I know people don't like focusing on optics, but like cmon how can you expect something like this wouldn't push people away?
Its young people just trying to get cameras on them and headlines written about them because they think any publicity will raise awareness and so the more the better.
The logic behind this is similar to the logic behind spree killings. Young people are incapable of even imagining politics solving problems so they just think up something subversive to do to vent their anger and say it’s in response to x or y issue. https://nitter.it/butleriano/status/1580920740005543936#m
If it is an op (if), I wonder if the soup kids even realized it. Like how far down does the meta-op go? Where is the line between op and misplaced but sincere action?
My theory is the kids were persuaded to do it by higher ups. I have talked to someone who's roommate was in Red Guards and they said basically the "leaders" would make all the 18 year olds that just joined do their weird stunts. Also they would be shamed if they didn't do any praxis that day.
Ayyy gotta love cult tactics to coerce kids that have immature prefrontal cortexes to do stupid shit for the "cause".
Hm I wonder what percent of "we're doing something broadly annoying and definitely unproductive to raise a w a r e n e s s" is an op like that
Seriously if you want to get attention to a cause, you can absolutely spend the time to think of something that is good and awesome, instead of whatever the fuck that shit was.
Seriously why attack some beloved cultural artifact when the CEO of Pollution parks his Tesla right fucking there
Yeah, and I think that even the people who want to do this kind of stuff earnestly, will somewhat quickly stop doing it if the resounding public consensus is "this person is a pro-corporate undercover cop"
I'm happy about the online reaction this time. Im seeing a lot of that sort of response
Like, don't get me wrong, art should be openly and freely accessible and we need full communism ASAP, but this feels fucking dumb on several levels.
- It's very performative, I'm assuming there's fucking glass so they didn't actually get it on the painting (correct me if I'm wrong!), just a frame.
- If you're protesting emissions and extraction, there's gotta be something better as a target to throw soup on.
- Art is one of the few things that at least tries to resist capital (not that it always does, and late capital has been especially effective at incorporating art into its ideology). Still, as a direction of productive activity towards beauty rather than accumulation, it's definitely a strange target (though, there's a bit from Hannah Arendt that notes all art is extractive, since you need trees for paper, etc. She talks about how "the price of art is life itself")
Just really dumb, since this will just turn bourgeois :LIB: s away from the project, and I don't see any way this rallies the proletariat.
Very much feels like an op as others in the thread have said.
I’m assuming there’s fucking glass so they didn’t actually get it on the painting (correct me if I’m wrong!), just a frame.
Yep. The London National Gallery is saying the painting is glazed, so the only damage the soup did was to the frame.
I dunno, I saw that self-portrait of Van Gogh in Chicago and there wasn't any glass or anything. There's a docent watching the room but that's it. I could have just taken out a dremel and rearranged his face until he looked like that portrait of Jesus that that woman "fixed" in Spain.
They probably show off a replica, have the 'real' in some vault and just use copies because why wouldn't you
Depends on the museum. Big tourists centers, like the national gallery where the Van Gogh painting is, I doubt would ever do that because people travel from across the world to go there. I’ve definitely seen pieces labeled as ‘replica’ or ‘reproduction’ on the card next to it at smaller private collection museums.
Interestingly enough, if you read the cnn article for this Van Gogh painting incident, they mention that the painting is glazed and therefore there’s no actual damage to it
Surprising, since you'd think they'd lean into evil activists destroy art angle.
Ah yes, the world's biggest user and pusher of the mass usage of fossil fuels, checks notes... 19th century oil painters?
XR do something that makes your reputation better challenge
I am suspicious of any form of praxis that would 100% lead to the arrest of the doers outside of purposefully locking/blocking something. Doing crime and getting away with it is itself a form of praxis against cops because it demonstrates the incompetence of pigs. Getting away with crime also means the pigs don't have a police record of you, meaning you can do crime another day.
This is honestly taking the worst parts of adventurism (individualist action, merely cathartic with no long term planning, alienating towards average people) and aboveground action (known to cops, restrained by the law, target for reactionary vigilantes). I feel sorry for these kids because in their bid to "get the message out," their faces are now known by every single reactionary and are seen as nothing more than senseless vandals by broader society.
In other news, now that they have discovered that London's National Gallery has oil paintings, the US is preparing to invade.
I can't judge anyone for throwing a hissy fit at th current state of affairs. Everything's fucked and no one with any power gives a shit.
Idc if it doesn't solve anything, bet it was a great release for those two watching their world slowly die.
This is like milkshaking. It's a symbolic assassination. It's proving that there are no defenses, and that anything treasured by chuds can be attacked.
art is good, actually, and is treasured by more than just chuds. this is like stomping on a baby kitten because even fash like cute animals and saying "haha see we got you where it hurts"
Chuds do not "treasure" art. Rethink this take
Death to America
Eh. I dunno this seems like a very radlib / baby leftist thing to do that's more a psychological salve for the activists than any material benefit for climate activism. Like this is the kind of adventurism I can see myself doing when I was like 22.
