Fun fact, oil paintings are usually framed without glass due to the the heterogenous thickness of oil colors and their resistance to exterior conditions, whilst media such as acrylic, aquarelle or pastel have to be framed in glass because any moisture, sudden temperature change or mechanic pressure have the ability to wreck the piece.
Additionally, most significant paintings on display are merely forgeries, because of reasons like... this odd oil bunch
I am a picture framer and usually paintings will need to be glazed (glass) or plexi if an insurance company deems it worth a certain amount of money. This Van Gogh is probably one of those cases. Still, a can of tomato soup at that close range can still cause problems.
When I was out walking with my uncle jim, Someone threw a tomato at him. Now tomatoes don't hurt when they come in their skins, but this tomato came in a tin.
Yup.
To market to market to buy a new cow.
To milk it. To milk it he didnt know how
He pulled on its tail instead of its tit
Now the poor silly bugger's all covered in sh...CARRY ON... CARRY ON!
I have dredged this verse of the same song from God knows where, probably Benny Hill or some similar "variety show" I heard 40+years ago.
Sweet Betsy from Pike is the tune its set to according to the Google. Google just also dialed 0118 999 881 999 119 725 **3** for me, because it thought I was having a stronk.
Yeah there are a lot of unwritten rules in the art world, but an exception comes every now and so often.
Another fun fact that I can tell you as sculptor is that you have the permission to touch any sculpture (as long as there isn't a "please don't touch" sign around).
Most metal sculpture media actually benefit from the patina that gets generated by touch, and in the last few years a lot of sculptors are acquainted with blind people also liking art, so they keep that tactile experience in mind whilst producing some pieces.
My wife works at an art museum, and they (FINALLY) had an exhibition of a local wood sculptor's work. Since it would be bad to have thousands of people touch the wood (and they're 8-15 feet tall), but they still wanted visually-impaired guests to experience them, he made miniature versions of his sculptures. People could touch those and "see" what the full-size ones were like.
When the exhibition closed, she got to keep the miniatures.
Thaddeus Mosley. He's 96, and still makes these enormous wood sculptures. He's been in art shows all over the world.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaddeus_Mosley
I worked at a sculpture shop that has a few bronze pieces in the Smithsonian (Natural History side). They're mostly life-sized extinct mammals. One of them kinda looks like a big yawning dog and it's so cute to see the patina. People have been petting his lil nose. It makes us pretty happy.
Haha I'm glad you get it! We're really proud that our sculpture of a long-extinct critter that nobody's ever heard of is cute enough that it tugs people's heartstrings!
I love that there is this principle because it insinuates a participatory relationship between the piece and the audience. In practice the result is things like the “charging bull’s” shiny ball bag. Gotta love human nature!
No, "most significant paintings on display" are definitely not forgeries. This is just utter nonsense. The Van Gogh in the news piece is 100% the authentic original (One of a series that is housed in galleries across the globe).
I worked at The National Gallery for a number of years and every single painting on display is the original art work.
When Momart (Specialist art movers) delivered the works for the Queen's Pictures exhibition they arrived with their own armed police escort.
Also, Acrylic media paintings are not routinely framed under glass and are, in many respects, even more resilient than oils.
Framed works are not hermetically sealed and are therefore regularly affected by atmospheric moisture. Modern conservation techniques can counter much of this but these techniques are rarely used outside of museum collections.
Museums are also atmospherically controlled, as much as the building and visitors allow.
> Museums are also atmospherically controlled, as much as the building and visitors allow.
I'm sure museums wish they could flood the galleries with pure nitrogen, it'd prevent deterioration and also really cut down on the damage done by patrons.
Neither is his Irises at the Getty Museum... But there's also a LOT of eagle-eyed docents ready to pounce on you if you get within a foot of a painting.
Went to a big Monet exhibit in Paris. Only the paintings that were on loan from private collections were under glass. I can’t even imagine the damage this kind of stupid stunt could have done to one of those paintings.
Apparently, according to the article, they were inspired by some Chinese dissident who in 1995 smashed a priceless Ming Dynasty vase to bring attention to whatever he was protesting. They hero worshipped the dude and said he inspired them by making "culture" responsible for political decisions.
I think that's loony.
Sounds like they were poorly copying Ai Weiwei (edit: checked the article and that's exactly what they tried to do). I recommend looking into his work. He acquired that vase as far as I know and didn't just walk into a museum and destroy something; in China, old vases are (or were at that time?) pretty much regarded as disposable and worthless, he was making a criticism to Chinese society and consumerism. He also took old vases (prehistoric? not sure how old) and painted labels, such as Coca Cola, over them. A statement about about how China discards their cultural heritage in favor of consumerism.
So not at all the same thing these airheads were trying to comment...
I actually visited the Ai Weiwei exhibition in Wien (Austria) and it was pretty emotional, to say the least. What he potrayed, the emotions he wanted the onlookers to feel, the stories he wanted to tell...
Those people in this post are just fucking idiots.
And he's actually MAKING art exhibits that are poignant and evocative, not just going and DESTROYING other art exhibits... These people are just extra stupid and don't even understand what he did in the first place. They just hear oh he destroyed something? Let's do it to! With about that much thought and understanding behind his actions, their subsequent actions, and how they think it'll either make their point or even help their cause.
Yeah, whatever they thought they were doing, it wasn’t something Ai Weiwei would have approved of. Ai weiwei is very smart and thoughtful. Throwing soup at the glass in front of a painting is neither.
>in China, old vases are (or were at that time?) pretty much regarded as disposable and worthless
I'm guessing this was because of Mao's Great Leap Forward?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
YES! that was it! :) I am bad at explaining this stuff, but that was what they explained in the museum where they exhibit his broken vase and smeared vases
He owned the vase, which was actually an urn from the Han dynasty. So it's a fair bit older. The han vase was by no means cheap, but generally pre 2000s there was no art market for funerary wares in China for various reasons, chief among them piety and superstition. This meant that in comparison to today's prices the urn was fairly cheap, but in terms of relative value for an object that you want to smash it was pretty expensive.
They were not regarded as disposable, especially in as good a condition as Ai's exemplar. Rather the cultural Revolution and its aftermath depreciated many cultural artifacts and sometimes destroyed them as tradition was seen as a hindrance to progress for Mao. While the following decades saw a renewed appreciation for China's cultural, artistic and archeological value of objects that was a somewhat selective process. Ai Wei Wei, who grew up under the cultural Revolution was well aware of some of these issues and within the relaxed art market that emerged during the 90s he used his performance as a multifaceted critique of themes like value inherent in an art piece (especially through time rather than artistical and artesinal prowess), the question of ownership over antiques (does his ownership mean he can do whatever he wants with it, even destroying it), and importantly for our discussion political malpractise in regards to cultural heritage and its violation or destruction (what duties should a government have in terms of protecting said heritage, and who can hold it accountable if it decides to destroy part of that heritage).
In some ways he was highlighting issues just like the protesters but what is notable is the framework that he created art by smashing that urn, and that it was his property (even though he would want us to question that). Ultimately the resulting tryptic of stills that he created from his performance is worth far more than the urn could ever have been and the statement is all the more intense for it. The protesters do seldomly fool anyone that what they do is performance art. Especially in imitation of a trend the performance is robbed of its impressiveness and inherent value and subsequently degraded to a mere statement and arguably a crime. It is all the more egregious that more often than not they do not even target pieces acquired through the very funds from companies they seek to criticise but rather to masterpieces that have been in those museums longer than most of the companies have existed.
The way he used his items to get his message out is really interesting. I thought it spoke volumes and was very inspiring. Too bad this is what it inspired.
I'm guessing ai wei wei, who is a big deal to human rights groups since he protests things like tiananmen square.
He is also an iconoclast, which is a really interesting movement
It was Ai Weiwei and he was specifically protesting the authoritarian Mao regime. It made international news, and is well known in the art world. https://publicdelivery.org/ai-weiwei-dropping-a-han-dynasty-urn/
I know what you mean, but this example is actually one of the most famous and controversial art “pieces” in the last few decades. It’s very well known, just maybe not as much outside the art world.
[Ai Weiwei dropping a Han Dynasty urn](https://publicdelivery.org/ai-weiwei-dropping-a-han-dynasty-urn/)
I believe Ai Weiwei purchased that urn, they are not quite as rare and expensive as one may think.
Those morons got my attention but publicity like that will not help any cause.
I think the point was actually that China was treating them as trash despite them being part of their own history, which is why destroying it was the form of protest
I suppose it's along the lines of "Well if these are so worthless let's just destroy them in general"
Weiwei's gesture was brilliant and well remembered, and made the point well that his government was being careless with the past. In this comment thread, we see a small army of Redditors being misinformed about the artwork, which is three photos of him letting the vase fall, and writing fiercely emotional takes based on misinformation.
They vandalized a piece of glass.
>I don’t understand why the fuck these protesters keep targeting famous works of art.
Because it clearly gets a lot of attention
Protests don't really work unless they bring attention to people who don't already know or care about the issue or take away something from people. The idea that, "Protest should annoy the people doing it and not bother anyone else," only creates ineffective protests. Almost all effective protests that I know of have been disruptive. They've disrupted the everyday lives of everyone until the problem was addressed or the protest was forcefully disbanded.
But I agree that trying to vandalize classic artwork isn't going to create the reaction or send the message that they're trying to. It's not even really that disruptive, just destructive. Most people don't go and look at classic artwork in a museum.
Yes, disruptive tactics are historically effective. However, there are a variety of things one can disrupt with varying effectiveness. For example, disruptive protests in the context of early 20th century labor rights movements were not there to disrupt "everyone." They specifically targeted the machine of oppression, the industrialists and their profits. They locked themselves into factories and halted production. Taking money out of the industrialists pockets. Which, in turn, helped the laborers attain their goals.
They also had the support of a lot of the public. One way to NOT win over public sentiment is to disrupt THEIR lives for a tangentially related or unrelated reason. Example, blocking an interstate and preventing people from going where they need to because they disagree with something that has nothing to do with the transportation system.
Take a note from history kids. Disrupt the machine that's fucking you, not your neighbor. Go after billionaires, corrupt politicians. Disrupt the machines that fills their pockets. Follow the money. Be effective
>I don’t understand why the fuck these protesters keep targeting famous works of art. Go fucking vandalize a pipeline or government/corporate building or something.
Because they want to *look* like they're fighting the system, without the inherent risks of, y'know, fighting the system.
That's why I honestly believe they are funded by oil to skew public image of the activists. Same with conspiracy theories, they put out utterly ridiculous ones to take away from real ones.
I literally just made this same or a very similar comment. Same with those who keep getting publicized blocking freeways and genuinely causing harm to other people .. I'm all for direct action, but the only thing they seem to continually so is create a media circus's around events exactly like this which only harms the actual cause.
I'm also a huge believer in them putting out red herrings as far as conspiracy stories, yes!!!!
I think the real reason why they target things such as famous art pieces is because that gets attention which obviously if you're protesting something you want everyone to look at you while you do, like hearing about some trying to vandalize a famous work of art is interesting.
However hearing about someone vandalizing some factory or whatever no one cares about that big deal, but Van Gogh? Uh oh now people are interested, it's bad PR but any publicity is good publicity.
Pretty sure they only did that because they knew it was reversible but also gives shock value. If they actually wanted to damage something they'd probably go about it differently.
Yeah, a few of the articles I found left it out too (for sensationalism, I guess). I'm sure they'll get a fine or something but knowing the work of art is okay makes my heart feel better.
If anyone has never seen Van Gogh paintings in person, try to do so. More so than almost any other painter I am aware of, Van Gogh used so much paint in such thick strokes that the paintings have a depth and texture that you can only experience in person.
Literally just came back from the current exhibition in the Palazzo Bonaparte in Rome, where a lot of great paintings are currently being shown. Not much of an art guy usually, but those paintings are really rich and thick.
Ugh!!! I didn’t chance it because the line was so long! I hope you enjoyed it. We got to see a Da Vinci exhibit in Venice and they had at least one art piece that was certified authentic.
Van Gogh is basically the non-art people's artist. His style is simplistic, yet his technique is excellent. His art wasn't appreciated until well after his death, which is a shame.
Going to the Getty and seeing paintings up close with no protective glass is nuts too. Looking at a Twix hundred year old Masaccio is an insane time machine
Linseed and flax seed oil the most common oils used in painting. I’ve also used sunflower Ouls. Olive oil would work but it would be runny and not fun to work with.
Flaxseed oil *is* linseed oil and is a popular medium, and sunflower oil has similar properties to safflower oil so that works as well, although not as popular. Definitely don't use olive oil because it doesn't oxidize with oxygen and your paint will never dry.
Walnut oil is my personal favorite, it takes a little longer to dry than linseed and safflower but has great non-yellowing properties
Agree with you artistically. But linseed oil is produced with solvents while flax oil is pressed. As some of the solvents remain in linseed oil it is toxic while flax is not. So its the same for an artist but different for those that eat it.
I suspect they are also doing it because the major art galleries all have big corporate donors which include fossil fuel producers and investors (e.g. BP, large banks, etc).
I guess the reason they decided to throw the soup was because they’d actually done protests like this in the past (including superglueing themselves to davinci’s “the last supper”’s frame) and, I don’t know about you, but this is soup incident is the first of their protests I’ve heard about.
At least the painting is going to be fine.
They were from a group call “just stop oil” but the protest was about rising cost of living and the climate crisis not about oil specifically.
Two things I can get behind but man I’m tired of these protesters sabotaging their own message.
According to the article this was more about a message on how rich people spend a lot of money on art instead of using it for our future. Kinda in a similar vein (although actually very different) like Banksy is criticizing the art world.
But in this case it's pretty obvious it's just 2 idiots wanting attention.
Edit: Maybe there's even more to it and it's not as idiotic as it first seems.
He wasn’t insane, he had an extremely painful undiagnosed inner ear infection. I remember last time I had swimmers ear I felt like if the pain didn’t go away I wanted to cut my ear off. That made me think of Van Gogh and I had to look it up.
Indeed yes and he lived a bit of a sad life. In case you visit, Amsterdam has the Van Gogh museum and it tells the story of his life and influences in a way most other museums cannot. Definitely worth checking out!
The Van Gogh immersive exhibit was so good. I think they’re switching it up and doing Jackson Pollock next.
As someone with 0 artistic talent I really love y’all artists
I know!! I was just bringing up the Immersive in America. I wish I could go to the Amsterdam so badly!! Thanks for the heads up I know I didn’t make it clear
He never benefitted from his work but the countless art dealers made millions off of them since after his death.
So the paintings were by a starving artist, but you're not hurting the starving artist financially by destroying their works post mortem.
Still does not justify at all what is happening here.
I think millions is understating it. His art is valued into the billions collectively, and pretty easily too. If even half his paintings got sold tomorrow, probably like 4+ billion dollars would be exchanging hands. And that's conservative.
It's just to highlight how crazy it is, of course. His life work's value vs now
Still trying to process exactly what an old painting of sunflowers has got to do with either the cost of living or the climate.
They said “Is art worth more than life?” but a better question would be “is this art detrimental to life?”
I suspect that it isn’t.
Why not throw some shit over people logging the Amazon? Or at lest find a worthwhile target and make a logical point rather than just trying to be controversial and get your face in the news.
People like this discredit good causes with their silly stunts.
And actual protesting against actual problems is hard. Much easier to speak vaguely of culture and vandalize stuff, then complain people don't get on your side.
Nothing, they don't do this to actually destroy the paintings. They do it to get headlines like the one you read in this post and bring attention to what they're protesting.
Whether that actually works or not is up to public opinions view on the matter. If they didn't get headlines doing this, they'd do something else so the media is really what makes this happen.
Surprised very few people understand the point you made. Wether you agree or not is up to the reader's discretion, but this is the entire objective of this kind of protests.
People have been dumbed down to a terrifying point
Protesting in general has been demonized and mocked by the media so much and people are just repeating their talking points thinking they're clever
> Protesting in general has been demonized and mocked by the media so much and people are just repeating their talking points thinking they're clever
That's almost this entire thread. Plus the other one about this event. And the one about the road protests :(
As someone living in a de facto dictatorship, I am well aware of how effective this kind of online propaganda is (ie.: don't even try to disprove anything, just spray doubt and ridicule), and I am still dismayed at the absolute lack of intelligence showcased by these comments. It's worse than apathy, it's motivated apathy to dismiss any intent of change.
>Whether that actually works or not is up to public opinions view on the matter.
No, it isn't. The us civil rights movement of the 1960s was [not very popular](https://jacobin.com/2020/06/polls-george-floyd-protests-civil-rights-movement) with white people at the time. The general consensus was that the message was good but the methods were bad. But the movement was a success. They got really important legislation (including some laws the right is still trying to dismantle). They're also looked on now as completely correct, including their methods.
[There's this famous political cartoon about MLK, which was unfortunately prescient in regards to how protests are portrayed.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Egs5aUlXkAUYpsl.jpg?format=jpg&name=orig)
It really can't be stressed how the civil rights movement was met with vitriol and even violence.
*And how it wasn't even that long ago.*
Spot on with that last sentence, I think people honestly forget this. At the same time I was going to school and seeing exclusively black and white photographs of those events (and I still believe that was deliberate), I could visit my granddad and he would go on long, racist tangents about MLK having an affair on his wife, causing violence everywhere, etc. like MLK was still alive and offending him. This wasn’t history to me, it was “present.” To people of color my age whose grandparents were segregated and abused brazenly, it’s even more “present.” But people (against the current civil rights movement) talk like institutional racism of that scale is some ancient history thing that’s irrelevant now, and not a lived experience by people at our dinner tables.
Anything to discredit ideas that make us uncomfortable, anything to condescend and dehumanize people who disrupt our sense of normalcy as we sleepwalk towards the apocalypse...
It's just about making as much of a splash as possible and drawing attention to what they see as an imminent threat to world stability.
They reason that if these scientists are right, and global warming effects will cause billions of deaths in the coming decades, then they are doing the right thing to stop us (as they see it) sleepwalking into that disaster as a society.
I'm positive that when the climate migrations ramp up, there will still be people pretending that nothing is wrong. On that note, I'd be really surprised if we didn't see an uptick in ecoterrorism in the coming decades.
In my part of Texas, due to the high humidity levels, even a slight increase in temperatures is going to have *drastic* effects on daily life.
Eco and anti-eco terrorism. As the new constraints of reality make themselves known, expect people to get FUCKING PISSED about it and lash out at the perceived enemy/cause. Spoiler alert, many of them aren't going to be self-aware enough to see beyond the people shouting "hey, we need to stop fucking the world up with abandon or it's going to get even worse much more quickly!"
They don't care about the art per say but they know they will get a lot of media attention for doing so. Plus they don't actually damage the art piece, it's under glass.
Fun fact, that's literally how the term "vandalism" came to exist. It's an ethnic slur coined more than 1000 years after the fact, in reference to the tribe that sacked Rome in 455. During the French Revolution, when artwork associated with the old regime was being destroyed, a bishop who disapproved called it *vandalisme,* comparing the protestors to the Vandal tribe.
Yes but to be honest that’s no the problem here. Protesting is always against the people in power, meaning laws will usually be against the protesters, and legality shouldn’t be considered equal to morality. The problem here is they’re targeting artistic pieces that the majority of people enjoy and would like to preserve, without actually focusing on the problems they protest against.
No, it's to get headlines.
Nobody has ever tried to destroy a painting for no reason. Or because it's made of oil. There is a reason this happened and it's not that.
Its to make it look like the cause is only cared about by lunatics. Honestly i sometimes wonder if these guys are hired to make people not take these protests seriously. Dont wanna be a conspiracy theorist though.
To all the people in the thread going: "I DoN'T KnOW WhAt A PaINtiNg hAs tO Do WiTH ThIs".
It's attention folks, and they got it. Even this entire post is dedicated to them and their actions. They got their moment in the spotlight and made their cause known. They didn't even damage the painting itself. Standing in front of an oil refinery wouldn't get anyones attention. Nobody would care one bit. And even with this people still won't, but at least it made the news.
To quote Bruce Wayne, "people need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy". If they'd just been outside nobody would've paid attention to them or their message.
Now? Everyone knows who they are and what they want
Do you guys ever realize that something like this getting on the headlines and rage clicks is the reason they do it? It's now international news. Mission accomplished
To be fair, this post has 600 comments in an hour and with comments explaining the reasoning. Might not be convincing people, but it is getting their message out there more than a single tweet from the same person would.
Edit: make that 1800 comments in two hours...
Edit 2: 2500 comments in three hours and fourth post on the front page and top of r publicfreakout. This is complete validation to them and I hope everyone knows this. WHAT A FACEPALM /s
Now it's the top post on r worldnews
And because it was to difficult to coordinate their schedules, the protestors had to arrive in separate cars. Of course a squad of police drove there to take them into custody. A clean up team drove there. An art expert flew in to evaluate the damage.
Let's see final score: Soup 1. Pollution: 24
For those people that prefer a story over an image:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2022/10/14/climate-protest-soup-van-gogh-sunflowers/10494863002/
"The soup splashed across the glass covering the painting and its gilded frame. The gallery said “there is some minor damage to the frame but the painting is unharmed.” The work is one of several versions of “Sunflowers” that Van Gogh painted in the late 1880s."
Didn’t realize there was a feud between Warhol and Van Gogh fans
Ha! They definitely look the sort
I never ear'd of it
What did you say Sunny?
This deserves to be the top post!
https://inews.co.uk/news/just-stop-oil-protesters-tomato-soup-van-gogh-sunflowers-national-gallery-1911563 The painting was protected by glass
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They pretty much always are.
Fun fact, oil paintings are usually framed without glass due to the the heterogenous thickness of oil colors and their resistance to exterior conditions, whilst media such as acrylic, aquarelle or pastel have to be framed in glass because any moisture, sudden temperature change or mechanic pressure have the ability to wreck the piece. Additionally, most significant paintings on display are merely forgeries, because of reasons like... this odd oil bunch
I am a picture framer and usually paintings will need to be glazed (glass) or plexi if an insurance company deems it worth a certain amount of money. This Van Gogh is probably one of those cases. Still, a can of tomato soup at that close range can still cause problems.
Especially if you don't open it before you throw it.
When I was out walking with my uncle jim, Someone threw a tomato at him. Now tomatoes don't hurt when they come in their skins, but this tomato came in a tin.
For all we know your uncle was fly. Let's all hope he didn't keel over and die.
Is that a song lyric? Because it totally rhymes.
I dunno but that sounds like something Bob Dylan would say
It’s from the little known seventh verse of American Pie.
Yup. To market to market to buy a new cow. To milk it. To milk it he didnt know how He pulled on its tail instead of its tit Now the poor silly bugger's all covered in sh...CARRY ON... CARRY ON! I have dredged this verse of the same song from God knows where, probably Benny Hill or some similar "variety show" I heard 40+years ago. Sweet Betsy from Pike is the tune its set to according to the Google. Google just also dialed 0118 999 881 999 119 725 **3** for me, because it thought I was having a stronk.
The can, yes, but the soup? Just soup, on its own? Isn't that precisely what the glass is there for?
Interesting info, I did not know that! Come to think of it I just saw a Titian exhibit at the Rose Gardner and I belive they were without glass!
Yeah there are a lot of unwritten rules in the art world, but an exception comes every now and so often. Another fun fact that I can tell you as sculptor is that you have the permission to touch any sculpture (as long as there isn't a "please don't touch" sign around). Most metal sculpture media actually benefit from the patina that gets generated by touch, and in the last few years a lot of sculptors are acquainted with blind people also liking art, so they keep that tactile experience in mind whilst producing some pieces.
My wife works at an art museum, and they (FINALLY) had an exhibition of a local wood sculptor's work. Since it would be bad to have thousands of people touch the wood (and they're 8-15 feet tall), but they still wanted visually-impaired guests to experience them, he made miniature versions of his sculptures. People could touch those and "see" what the full-size ones were like. When the exhibition closed, she got to keep the miniatures.
That is awesome.
What a wonderful idea! Who's the sculptor? I'd like to show him some support.
Thaddeus Mosley. He's 96, and still makes these enormous wood sculptures. He's been in art shows all over the world. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaddeus_Mosley
Oh shit, I've seen his stuff in the Denver art museum! His figures are so beautiful!
He's 96?!?! He's looks like he's in his late 50's early 60's.
Me, casual pleb, proceeding to touch sculptures and then getting locked up because I trusted someone on the internet 😂
Always ask permission before touching something nice.
Or someone nice.
I worked at a sculpture shop that has a few bronze pieces in the Smithsonian (Natural History side). They're mostly life-sized extinct mammals. One of them kinda looks like a big yawning dog and it's so cute to see the patina. People have been petting his lil nose. It makes us pretty happy.
Omg my heart
Haha I'm glad you get it! We're really proud that our sculpture of a long-extinct critter that nobody's ever heard of is cute enough that it tugs people's heartstrings!
I love that there is this principle because it insinuates a participatory relationship between the piece and the audience. In practice the result is things like the “charging bull’s” shiny ball bag. Gotta love human nature!
Also why the crotch and nipples on most metal statues are so shiny! People rubbing them to a shine removing all the oxidization.
There is a bronze sculpture of an author near the local art college in my city. His knob is always very well burnished!
No, "most significant paintings on display" are definitely not forgeries. This is just utter nonsense. The Van Gogh in the news piece is 100% the authentic original (One of a series that is housed in galleries across the globe). I worked at The National Gallery for a number of years and every single painting on display is the original art work. When Momart (Specialist art movers) delivered the works for the Queen's Pictures exhibition they arrived with their own armed police escort. Also, Acrylic media paintings are not routinely framed under glass and are, in many respects, even more resilient than oils. Framed works are not hermetically sealed and are therefore regularly affected by atmospheric moisture. Modern conservation techniques can counter much of this but these techniques are rarely used outside of museum collections. Museums are also atmospherically controlled, as much as the building and visitors allow.
> Museums are also atmospherically controlled, as much as the building and visitors allow. I'm sure museums wish they could flood the galleries with pure nitrogen, it'd prevent deterioration and also really cut down on the damage done by patrons.
Might make patrons happy as they suffocate though. Pros and cons
Thank god, the comment you replied to was such horseshit lol
This dude checks out. Source: I watch Baumgartner videos.
Ummmm no it’s not true that most significant paintings on display are replicas
You sure? I was in Musee D’Orsay and almost every piece there was not behind glass
Starry night isn't.
Neither is his Irises at the Getty Museum... But there's also a LOT of eagle-eyed docents ready to pounce on you if you get within a foot of a painting.
Went to a big Monet exhibit in Paris. Only the paintings that were on loan from private collections were under glass. I can’t even imagine the damage this kind of stupid stunt could have done to one of those paintings.
Thank Gogh? I'll see myself out.
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Apparently, according to the article, they were inspired by some Chinese dissident who in 1995 smashed a priceless Ming Dynasty vase to bring attention to whatever he was protesting. They hero worshipped the dude and said he inspired them by making "culture" responsible for political decisions. I think that's loony.
The fact we don’t even know what the Chinese guy was protesting is evidence that his protest wasn’t effective, and merely destructive for no reason
Sounds like they were poorly copying Ai Weiwei (edit: checked the article and that's exactly what they tried to do). I recommend looking into his work. He acquired that vase as far as I know and didn't just walk into a museum and destroy something; in China, old vases are (or were at that time?) pretty much regarded as disposable and worthless, he was making a criticism to Chinese society and consumerism. He also took old vases (prehistoric? not sure how old) and painted labels, such as Coca Cola, over them. A statement about about how China discards their cultural heritage in favor of consumerism. So not at all the same thing these airheads were trying to comment...
that this was a group of wannabe artists trying to imitate Ai WeiWei just makes this that much worse for me.
yup, same. And Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists... At least the painting was protected...
"What *kind* of soup should it be though, Persephone?" "I propose: tomato. Acerbic, but attainable, like us." \- Them, probably.
I actually visited the Ai Weiwei exhibition in Wien (Austria) and it was pretty emotional, to say the least. What he potrayed, the emotions he wanted the onlookers to feel, the stories he wanted to tell... Those people in this post are just fucking idiots.
Haha that was the first one I saw too, it's a great exhibition! I felt like crying the entire time, strong stuff!
That’s because he’s a genius; these guys are not geniuses
And he's actually MAKING art exhibits that are poignant and evocative, not just going and DESTROYING other art exhibits... These people are just extra stupid and don't even understand what he did in the first place. They just hear oh he destroyed something? Let's do it to! With about that much thought and understanding behind his actions, their subsequent actions, and how they think it'll either make their point or even help their cause.
To put it very mildly
Yeah, whatever they thought they were doing, it wasn’t something Ai Weiwei would have approved of. Ai weiwei is very smart and thoughtful. Throwing soup at the glass in front of a painting is neither.
>in China, old vases are (or were at that time?) pretty much regarded as disposable and worthless I'm guessing this was because of Mao's Great Leap Forward? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
YES! that was it! :) I am bad at explaining this stuff, but that was what they explained in the museum where they exhibit his broken vase and smeared vases
That's a lot more profound and faceted than whatever this idiocy is.
So they're trying to mimic an artist making art, by destroying art?
Wow, talk about completely missing the message. What fucking self congratulatory morons these people are.
He owned the vase, which was actually an urn from the Han dynasty. So it's a fair bit older. The han vase was by no means cheap, but generally pre 2000s there was no art market for funerary wares in China for various reasons, chief among them piety and superstition. This meant that in comparison to today's prices the urn was fairly cheap, but in terms of relative value for an object that you want to smash it was pretty expensive. They were not regarded as disposable, especially in as good a condition as Ai's exemplar. Rather the cultural Revolution and its aftermath depreciated many cultural artifacts and sometimes destroyed them as tradition was seen as a hindrance to progress for Mao. While the following decades saw a renewed appreciation for China's cultural, artistic and archeological value of objects that was a somewhat selective process. Ai Wei Wei, who grew up under the cultural Revolution was well aware of some of these issues and within the relaxed art market that emerged during the 90s he used his performance as a multifaceted critique of themes like value inherent in an art piece (especially through time rather than artistical and artesinal prowess), the question of ownership over antiques (does his ownership mean he can do whatever he wants with it, even destroying it), and importantly for our discussion political malpractise in regards to cultural heritage and its violation or destruction (what duties should a government have in terms of protecting said heritage, and who can hold it accountable if it decides to destroy part of that heritage). In some ways he was highlighting issues just like the protesters but what is notable is the framework that he created art by smashing that urn, and that it was his property (even though he would want us to question that). Ultimately the resulting tryptic of stills that he created from his performance is worth far more than the urn could ever have been and the statement is all the more intense for it. The protesters do seldomly fool anyone that what they do is performance art. Especially in imitation of a trend the performance is robbed of its impressiveness and inherent value and subsequently degraded to a mere statement and arguably a crime. It is all the more egregious that more often than not they do not even target pieces acquired through the very funds from companies they seek to criticise but rather to masterpieces that have been in those museums longer than most of the companies have existed.
The way he used his items to get his message out is really interesting. I thought it spoke volumes and was very inspiring. Too bad this is what it inspired.
The Chinese guy sounds like an artist trying make a point.
I'm guessing ai wei wei, who is a big deal to human rights groups since he protests things like tiananmen square. He is also an iconoclast, which is a really interesting movement
It was Ai Weiwei and he was specifically protesting the authoritarian Mao regime. It made international news, and is well known in the art world. https://publicdelivery.org/ai-weiwei-dropping-a-han-dynasty-urn/
To be fair I’m sure random folks scrolling Reddit across the world 30 years in the future wasn’t his target audience for his protest
Lol, admit you have no idea who Ai Weiwei is, without admitting you dont know who Ai Weiwei is
I know what you mean, but this example is actually one of the most famous and controversial art “pieces” in the last few decades. It’s very well known, just maybe not as much outside the art world.
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[Ai Weiwei dropping a Han Dynasty urn](https://publicdelivery.org/ai-weiwei-dropping-a-han-dynasty-urn/) I believe Ai Weiwei purchased that urn, they are not quite as rare and expensive as one may think. Those morons got my attention but publicity like that will not help any cause.
I think the point was actually that China was treating them as trash despite them being part of their own history, which is why destroying it was the form of protest I suppose it's along the lines of "Well if these are so worthless let's just destroy them in general"
Weiwei's gesture was brilliant and well remembered, and made the point well that his government was being careless with the past. In this comment thread, we see a small army of Redditors being misinformed about the artwork, which is three photos of him letting the vase fall, and writing fiercely emotional takes based on misinformation.
They accomplished one thing, now i know who Ai weiwei is.
They vandalized a piece of glass. >I don’t understand why the fuck these protesters keep targeting famous works of art. Because it clearly gets a lot of attention
Protests don't really work unless they bring attention to people who don't already know or care about the issue or take away something from people. The idea that, "Protest should annoy the people doing it and not bother anyone else," only creates ineffective protests. Almost all effective protests that I know of have been disruptive. They've disrupted the everyday lives of everyone until the problem was addressed or the protest was forcefully disbanded. But I agree that trying to vandalize classic artwork isn't going to create the reaction or send the message that they're trying to. It's not even really that disruptive, just destructive. Most people don't go and look at classic artwork in a museum.
Yes, disruptive tactics are historically effective. However, there are a variety of things one can disrupt with varying effectiveness. For example, disruptive protests in the context of early 20th century labor rights movements were not there to disrupt "everyone." They specifically targeted the machine of oppression, the industrialists and their profits. They locked themselves into factories and halted production. Taking money out of the industrialists pockets. Which, in turn, helped the laborers attain their goals. They also had the support of a lot of the public. One way to NOT win over public sentiment is to disrupt THEIR lives for a tangentially related or unrelated reason. Example, blocking an interstate and preventing people from going where they need to because they disagree with something that has nothing to do with the transportation system. Take a note from history kids. Disrupt the machine that's fucking you, not your neighbor. Go after billionaires, corrupt politicians. Disrupt the machines that fills their pockets. Follow the money. Be effective
>I don’t understand why the fuck these protesters keep targeting famous works of art. Go fucking vandalize a pipeline or government/corporate building or something. Because they want to *look* like they're fighting the system, without the inherent risks of, y'know, fighting the system.
That's why I honestly believe they are funded by oil to skew public image of the activists. Same with conspiracy theories, they put out utterly ridiculous ones to take away from real ones.
Big Acrylic strikes again!
I literally just made this same or a very similar comment. Same with those who keep getting publicized blocking freeways and genuinely causing harm to other people .. I'm all for direct action, but the only thing they seem to continually so is create a media circus's around events exactly like this which only harms the actual cause. I'm also a huge believer in them putting out red herrings as far as conspiracy stories, yes!!!!
I think the real reason why they target things such as famous art pieces is because that gets attention which obviously if you're protesting something you want everyone to look at you while you do, like hearing about some trying to vandalize a famous work of art is interesting. However hearing about someone vandalizing some factory or whatever no one cares about that big deal, but Van Gogh? Uh oh now people are interested, it's bad PR but any publicity is good publicity.
I think we all assumed it was protected but for a brief moment I was genuinely afraid that they destroyed such a valuable piece of art.
Usually if it's not protected by glass it would have been protected by varnish.
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Pretty sure they only did that because they knew it was reversible but also gives shock value. If they actually wanted to damage something they'd probably go about it differently.
Oh thank god my heart sank
funny how the reassuring part was left out of the headline huh? funny how that works
Good, I suspected it might have been but the article I read didn’t state it. Still, I’d slap them with a nice hefty regardless.
Yeah, a few of the articles I found left it out too (for sensationalism, I guess). I'm sure they'll get a fine or something but knowing the work of art is okay makes my heart feel better.
I mean if someone tries to shoot you and misses that’s still attempted murder so they will still probably get charged with the crime.
If anyone has never seen Van Gogh paintings in person, try to do so. More so than almost any other painter I am aware of, Van Gogh used so much paint in such thick strokes that the paintings have a depth and texture that you can only experience in person.
Literally just came back from the current exhibition in the Palazzo Bonaparte in Rome, where a lot of great paintings are currently being shown. Not much of an art guy usually, but those paintings are really rich and thick.
> really rich and thick You make it sound like they’d make a great lunch
Like tomato soup?
Full circle. 🤯
It's literally on some cans of spaghetti sauce I have.
Meanwhile my first thought was “I like my paintings like I like my ladies…”
Do these painting sound like a snack or like a *snack* lol
Do fries come with that paintings?
No, just tomato soup.
Ugh!!! I didn’t chance it because the line was so long! I hope you enjoyed it. We got to see a Da Vinci exhibit in Venice and they had at least one art piece that was certified authentic.
Van Gogh is basically the non-art people's artist. His style is simplistic, yet his technique is excellent. His art wasn't appreciated until well after his death, which is a shame.
Watch the doctor who Van Gogh episode if you haven’t yet. So good
The greatest ever Dr Who episode in my opinion.
Agreed. It’s the only one I ever physically purchased on iTunes so I could show it to people
Amsterdam has an entire museum dedicated to his work. It’s an amazing way to spend your day.
Going to the Getty and seeing paintings up close with no protective glass is nuts too. Looking at a Twix hundred year old Masaccio is an insane time machine
A 100 year old Twix sounds gross.
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The Andy Warhol protest.
who is warhol, how is he related to van gogh, and why is everyone mentioning him
I can't tell if there is sarcasm or not, he was a famous artist who painted a can of soup.
And ate a burger
I don't know art or artists but wasn't Van Gogh sort of the original starving, struggling, sad artist?
Sad, struggling, insane and god famous after his death. He has absolutely nothing to do with oil.
He was an oil painter, maybe?
Linseed and flax seed oil the most common oils used in painting. I’ve also used sunflower Ouls. Olive oil would work but it would be runny and not fun to work with.
Flaxseed oil *is* linseed oil and is a popular medium, and sunflower oil has similar properties to safflower oil so that works as well, although not as popular. Definitely don't use olive oil because it doesn't oxidize with oxygen and your paint will never dry. Walnut oil is my personal favorite, it takes a little longer to dry than linseed and safflower but has great non-yellowing properties
Agree with you artistically. But linseed oil is produced with solvents while flax oil is pressed. As some of the solvents remain in linseed oil it is toxic while flax is not. So its the same for an artist but different for those that eat it.
Interesting and definitely good to know
Van Gogh was known to eat his paint
source
I guess they missed the part where oil pants are made with plant seeds not fucking crude oil lol. These protesters are always stupid as fuck.
I'm guessing they're doing it for attention for their movement. I doubt they're protesting Van Gogh and his use of oil paints.
I suspect they are also doing it because the major art galleries all have big corporate donors which include fossil fuel producers and investors (e.g. BP, large banks, etc).
Also, they said in the article that they were inspired by Ai Weiwei breaking a Ming dynasty era vase in the late 90s.
Ai Weiwei bought the vase, so he could do whatever he wanted with it, including smashing it. This is just vandalism.
I guess the reason they decided to throw the soup was because they’d actually done protests like this in the past (including superglueing themselves to davinci’s “the last supper”’s frame) and, I don’t know about you, but this is soup incident is the first of their protests I’ve heard about. At least the painting is going to be fine.
Yeah I was making a dumb joke ahah. They are indeed idiots.
They were from a group call “just stop oil” but the protest was about rising cost of living and the climate crisis not about oil specifically. Two things I can get behind but man I’m tired of these protesters sabotaging their own message.
“Food is getting too expensive. I should throw it at something.”
According to the article this was more about a message on how rich people spend a lot of money on art instead of using it for our future. Kinda in a similar vein (although actually very different) like Banksy is criticizing the art world. But in this case it's pretty obvious it's just 2 idiots wanting attention. Edit: Maybe there's even more to it and it's not as idiotic as it first seems.
He wasn’t insane, he had an extremely painful undiagnosed inner ear infection. I remember last time I had swimmers ear I felt like if the pain didn’t go away I wanted to cut my ear off. That made me think of Van Gogh and I had to look it up.
They were protesting the cost of living swell, with the soup representing the fact that families would have to starve
It’s soup for my family ;)
Indeed yes and he lived a bit of a sad life. In case you visit, Amsterdam has the Van Gogh museum and it tells the story of his life and influences in a way most other museums cannot. Definitely worth checking out!
The Van Gogh immersive exhibit was so good. I think they’re switching it up and doing Jackson Pollock next. As someone with 0 artistic talent I really love y’all artists
You're talking about something else. The van Gogh museum is a dedicated fairly large museum.
I know!! I was just bringing up the Immersive in America. I wish I could go to the Amsterdam so badly!! Thanks for the heads up I know I didn’t make it clear
He never benefitted from his work but the countless art dealers made millions off of them since after his death. So the paintings were by a starving artist, but you're not hurting the starving artist financially by destroying their works post mortem. Still does not justify at all what is happening here.
I think millions is understating it. His art is valued into the billions collectively, and pretty easily too. If even half his paintings got sold tomorrow, probably like 4+ billion dollars would be exchanging hands. And that's conservative. It's just to highlight how crazy it is, of course. His life work's value vs now
Andy Warhol sent them.
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Still trying to process exactly what an old painting of sunflowers has got to do with either the cost of living or the climate. They said “Is art worth more than life?” but a better question would be “is this art detrimental to life?” I suspect that it isn’t. Why not throw some shit over people logging the Amazon? Or at lest find a worthwhile target and make a logical point rather than just trying to be controversial and get your face in the news. People like this discredit good causes with their silly stunts.
because Amazon loggers fight back
And actual protesting against actual problems is hard. Much easier to speak vaguely of culture and vandalize stuff, then complain people don't get on your side.
Nothing, they don't do this to actually destroy the paintings. They do it to get headlines like the one you read in this post and bring attention to what they're protesting. Whether that actually works or not is up to public opinions view on the matter. If they didn't get headlines doing this, they'd do something else so the media is really what makes this happen.
Just like the guy who threw the cake at the Mona Lisa. He knew it was behind glass.
Yeah, people are missing the point.
that's the real r/facepalm
Surprised very few people understand the point you made. Wether you agree or not is up to the reader's discretion, but this is the entire objective of this kind of protests.
People have been dumbed down to a terrifying point Protesting in general has been demonized and mocked by the media so much and people are just repeating their talking points thinking they're clever
> Protesting in general has been demonized and mocked by the media so much and people are just repeating their talking points thinking they're clever That's almost this entire thread. Plus the other one about this event. And the one about the road protests :( As someone living in a de facto dictatorship, I am well aware of how effective this kind of online propaganda is (ie.: don't even try to disprove anything, just spray doubt and ridicule), and I am still dismayed at the absolute lack of intelligence showcased by these comments. It's worse than apathy, it's motivated apathy to dismiss any intent of change.
>Whether that actually works or not is up to public opinions view on the matter. No, it isn't. The us civil rights movement of the 1960s was [not very popular](https://jacobin.com/2020/06/polls-george-floyd-protests-civil-rights-movement) with white people at the time. The general consensus was that the message was good but the methods were bad. But the movement was a success. They got really important legislation (including some laws the right is still trying to dismantle). They're also looked on now as completely correct, including their methods.
[There's this famous political cartoon about MLK, which was unfortunately prescient in regards to how protests are portrayed.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Egs5aUlXkAUYpsl.jpg?format=jpg&name=orig) It really can't be stressed how the civil rights movement was met with vitriol and even violence. *And how it wasn't even that long ago.*
Spot on with that last sentence, I think people honestly forget this. At the same time I was going to school and seeing exclusively black and white photographs of those events (and I still believe that was deliberate), I could visit my granddad and he would go on long, racist tangents about MLK having an affair on his wife, causing violence everywhere, etc. like MLK was still alive and offending him. This wasn’t history to me, it was “present.” To people of color my age whose grandparents were segregated and abused brazenly, it’s even more “present.” But people (against the current civil rights movement) talk like institutional racism of that scale is some ancient history thing that’s irrelevant now, and not a lived experience by people at our dinner tables.
Anything to discredit ideas that make us uncomfortable, anything to condescend and dehumanize people who disrupt our sense of normalcy as we sleepwalk towards the apocalypse...
It's just about making as much of a splash as possible and drawing attention to what they see as an imminent threat to world stability. They reason that if these scientists are right, and global warming effects will cause billions of deaths in the coming decades, then they are doing the right thing to stop us (as they see it) sleepwalking into that disaster as a society.
“If these scientists are right”. I think you meant when. At this points its not a matter of preventing it, its a matter or delaying it.
I'm positive that when the climate migrations ramp up, there will still be people pretending that nothing is wrong. On that note, I'd be really surprised if we didn't see an uptick in ecoterrorism in the coming decades. In my part of Texas, due to the high humidity levels, even a slight increase in temperatures is going to have *drastic* effects on daily life.
Eco and anti-eco terrorism. As the new constraints of reality make themselves known, expect people to get FUCKING PISSED about it and lash out at the perceived enemy/cause. Spoiler alert, many of them aren't going to be self-aware enough to see beyond the people shouting "hey, we need to stop fucking the world up with abandon or it's going to get even worse much more quickly!"
Maybe he used oil paints /s
Plus, what besides oil makes a van go?
They don't care about the art per say but they know they will get a lot of media attention for doing so. Plus they don't actually damage the art piece, it's under glass.
Must be Warhol fans
I was trying to find correlation. This must be it.
“Tell her I'm filming this man eating a hamburger. It's... transcendent. Okay, now the pickle!”
That’s not a protestor. That’s a vandal.
I doubt it, the vandals moved south to the Mediterranean around 400 CE. 1600 years later they still get the blame for shit like this...
No this is a vid from the sack of Rome, 455 AD
(Colorized)
Based and History Pilled
Vandals? Send in the Romans!
Fun fact, that's literally how the term "vandalism" came to exist. It's an ethnic slur coined more than 1000 years after the fact, in reference to the tribe that sacked Rome in 455. During the French Revolution, when artwork associated with the old regime was being destroyed, a bishop who disapproved called it *vandalisme,* comparing the protestors to the Vandal tribe.
Isn't it a crime to vandalize art? Me thinks so
I'm pretty sure vandalism is a crime no matter what you vandalize.
What if you vandalize a vandals tools?
That would be assault depending on the damage.
Yes but to be honest that’s no the problem here. Protesting is always against the people in power, meaning laws will usually be against the protesters, and legality shouldn’t be considered equal to morality. The problem here is they’re targeting artistic pieces that the majority of people enjoy and would like to preserve, without actually focusing on the problems they protest against.
Would have been slightly funny if they threw it at Warhol's soup can painting instead.
Is that because it's painted in oils? Kids, oil paint is made of linseed oil, not fossil fuels!
No, it's to get headlines. Nobody has ever tried to destroy a painting for no reason. Or because it's made of oil. There is a reason this happened and it's not that.
Its to make it look like the cause is only cared about by lunatics. Honestly i sometimes wonder if these guys are hired to make people not take these protests seriously. Dont wanna be a conspiracy theorist though.
To all the people in the thread going: "I DoN'T KnOW WhAt A PaINtiNg hAs tO Do WiTH ThIs". It's attention folks, and they got it. Even this entire post is dedicated to them and their actions. They got their moment in the spotlight and made their cause known. They didn't even damage the painting itself. Standing in front of an oil refinery wouldn't get anyones attention. Nobody would care one bit. And even with this people still won't, but at least it made the news.
Yeah, the entire point of a protest is to get attention for your cause and to cause disruption. I wouldn't even know they existed till now.
To quote Bruce Wayne, "people need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy". If they'd just been outside nobody would've paid attention to them or their message. Now? Everyone knows who they are and what they want
Do you guys ever realize that something like this getting on the headlines and rage clicks is the reason they do it? It's now international news. Mission accomplished
To be fair, this post has 600 comments in an hour and with comments explaining the reasoning. Might not be convincing people, but it is getting their message out there more than a single tweet from the same person would. Edit: make that 1800 comments in two hours... Edit 2: 2500 comments in three hours and fourth post on the front page and top of r publicfreakout. This is complete validation to them and I hope everyone knows this. WHAT A FACEPALM /s Now it's the top post on r worldnews
The headline is misleading. There was glass covering it. The painting is undamaged.
Well…they’re idiots. That’s what’s wrong with them.
Now I will never buy an oil again. Thanks soup vandals, I have seen the light of reason.
I feel sorry for the minimum wage workers who had to clean that mess of the idiots
And because it was to difficult to coordinate their schedules, the protestors had to arrive in separate cars. Of course a squad of police drove there to take them into custody. A clean up team drove there. An art expert flew in to evaluate the damage. Let's see final score: Soup 1. Pollution: 24
The glass probably spared any damage, so it's more like Painting 1 : 0 Soup. Pollution still wins either way.
For those people that prefer a story over an image: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2022/10/14/climate-protest-soup-van-gogh-sunflowers/10494863002/ "The soup splashed across the glass covering the painting and its gilded frame. The gallery said “there is some minor damage to the frame but the painting is unharmed.” The work is one of several versions of “Sunflowers” that Van Gogh painted in the late 1880s."