The most expensive painting by Claude Monet was the victim of mashed potatoes

Eco-activists raged in Postdam: they doused a masterpiece worth $110 million

Strange they are – these British environmental activists. They took Claude Monet’s “Haystack” in the Barberini Museum in Postdam and poured it over with mashed potatoes, and then glued their palms to the wall with shouts: “What do you value more – art or life?”. With the same message last week, girls from the Just Stop Oil movement threw tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the London National Gallery. Activists oppose new oil projects in Europe. “Fossil fuels are killing us,” they say. It can be. But, sorry, what does art have to do with it? What was wrong with Van Gogh and Monet – with the oil they painted with?

What do world masterpieces have to do with the oil crisis in Europe? Why do paintings become victims of fossil fuel opponents calling for a switch to renewable energy sources? Like painting is a luxury, so let’s send picturesque haystacks with sunflowers to the firebox? Or is there a call to spend money on solar panels instead of the great and beautiful? There is nothing to walk through the galleries, let’s turn off the electricity and gas there? So what are the British “butter fighters” trying to say with such marginal language and gangster methods?

The most expensive painting by Claude Monet “Haystack” became a new victim of ecologist vandals. In 2016, it was sold at auction for 110.7 million dollars and soon – for the first time in 75 years! – made available to the general public. Together with other legendary works of Monet, the painting was exhibited at the Barberini Museum, which was opened by one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Germany, Hasso Plattner. The philanthropist made a fortune on IT technologies, and not at all on oil, by the way. Fortunately, the painting was protected by special glass, so it is unlikely that it was badly damaged, but it will not return to the exhibition soon.

Recall that last time the activists attacked Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, which is estimated at more than $ 70 million. The work was also under glass, and at that time the “butter fighters” poured not mashed potatoes, but tomato soup on the great. “Sunflowers” have not yet recovered from the shock – Van Gogh’s masterpiece “departs” in the restoration workshops of the London National Gallery.

By the way, members of the “Just Stop Oil” movement, which appeared in mid-February this year (that is, even before interruptions in oil and gas purchases began in Europe), have become regulars at the museum since the summer. They first showed themselves in July, attacking a painting by the Romantic artist John Contable in the same London gallery. Activists glued a picture of a post-apocalypse on top of the “Hay Cart”, depicting a quiet rural life. So they were apparently trying to say that if we don’t return to the farming way, there will be a climate collapse? Contebl’s painting is still under restoration.

Then the “oil fighters” visited the Royal Academy of Arts, where they liked a copy of “The Last Supper” by Leonardo da Vinci. Four activists glued their hands to the frame and spray-painted on the wall next to the canvas: “No to new oil.” They said that art cannot save the world, but if the museums are closed, the government will certainly abandon its plans to develop new oil fields. Museums for some reason did not believe.

Then the activists armed themselves with tomato soup – and again visited the London Gallery, now to Van Gogh. And now we have reached Postdam. Apparently, they believe that a private German museum can influence the British government? Or did they decide that with their “performance” they could convince Hasso Plattner to invest in windmills instead of picturesque haystacks?

So far, clumsy publicity stunts have only led to damage to great paintings and criminal cases against vandals. Incidentally, the oil wrestlers are not the first to try to make a name by sticking to top-notch art. Ten years ago, a clever man decided to save his name for posterity and wrote on the masterpiece of Mark Rothko: “Vladimir Umanets, 12. A potential work of yellowism.” Yellowism is an attempt by two failed artists to create an alternative to art as such, he explained his “concepts”. Umanets was convicted of vandalism for two years and safely forgotten. However, it doesn’t seem quite right. The idea to create a hype at the expense of recognized masterpieces remained somewhere in the London air, saturated with oil fumes. Now, if the activists themselves tried to live a rural life without the benefits of civilization, they could only be applauded. And spoiling the pictures is not environmentally friendly, for this the article shines.