We won’t be angry as long as they just mash the glass protector that protects the Impressionist paintings. Van Gogh’s Tomato Soup Attack on Sunflowers seemed like a pro-Pop and Impressionism performance until you saw that they were environmentalist and more.
“Only Stop Oil fans choose life over art. This gallery showcases human creativity and genius, but the Government’s failure to act on climate change and the cost of living is destroying our heritage,” they argued. Reasoning ranging from global warming to the National Gallery in London has something like “I’ll give you a brick because I know you like rice pudding under the door”. Governments can do more for the planet, and environmental protests can do better than the fake vandalism of public art that is everyone’s legacy.
Art, always worse and more obnoxious, is an advertising and speculative business for the richest, especially at auctions where money and vanity compete and delicate ladies channel testosterone into towering bank transactions that leave a trail of oil and pigment on the wall. The big market is in the hands of American, Chinese and Arab billionaires. Casino boss Steve Wynn’s ex-wife, Elaine Pascal Wynn, paid €105.8 million for the Francis Bacon triptych, and Al Mayassa bint Hamad al Zani, sister of the Emir of Qatar, paid around €15 million for the 14 giant fetus sculptures. Damien Hirst, I read it a few years ago. These treasures contain oil.
Environmental sympathizers will get more sympathy by throwing tomato spaghetti into the windshields of privately owned Ferraris, McLarens, Rolls-Royces or Lamborghinis than public pictures, but we’re not going to complicate their lives, they’re better off facing sleepy museum keepers. Do not see pots crossing in rooms where it is forbidden to eat hamburgers or chips.