Claude Monet became the latest artist to be the focus of food-related climate protests after members of a German environmental group threw mashed potatoes over one of his paintings at the Potsdam museum on Sunday.
Nine days after Just Stop Oil emptied the tomato soup for Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London, two people from last generation (Previous Generation) Enter the Barberini Museum, douse Monet’s Haystacks with potatoes and stick your hands to the wall.
Protesters say the stunt is meant to be a wake-up call in the face of climate catastrophe. “People are starving, people are freezing, people are dying,” one of the activists said in a statement. video Letzte Generation tweeted about the event.
“We’re in a climate catastrophe and all you’re afraid of is tomato soup or mashed potatoes in a picture. You know what I’m afraid of? I’m scared because science tells us we won’t be able to feed our families by 2050,” he said. protesters said. “Will the mashed potatoes on the painting make you listen? If we had to fight for food, the painting would be worthless. When did you finally start listening? When did you start listening and stop working as usual? “
The group said it had decided to make “this Monet the stage and the public the audience” in an attempt to get its message across. “If a painting needs to be thrown with mashed potatoes or tomato soup to remind society that the fossil process is killing us all, then we’ll give you mashed potatoes on the painting,” it added.
A spokesman for the museum said the painting was protected by glass, and the museum later said it did not appear to have been damaged.
Police arrived quickly and the protesters’ hands were “relatively easy” to get off the wall, the spokesman said.
Last year, members of the Letzte Generation staged a hunger strike outside the Reichstag in Berlin to protest the lack of political action in the climate emergency. Earlier this year, they glued themselves to some of Germany’s busiest autobahns.
The group accused the German government of ignoring all warnings and bringing the country to the “edge of the abyss”, saying it was part of the last generation capable of preventing society from collapsing.
“Faced with this reality, we accept high [fines]criminal charges and deprivation of liberty fear nothing,” it said on its website.
Galleries have recently become popular venues for high-profile protests. In July, two members of the Italian climate activist group Ultima Generazione (also Last Generation) glued their palms to the glass protecting Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and unfolded a banner that read “Ultima Generazione Airless and Carbonless” (Previous generation, no gas, no coal).
Just Stop Oil activists glued themselves to the frame of a 500-year-old painting of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy of Arts in London two weeks ago.