“They had it coming”

The good cause, the bad delivery, and the ugly soup spills

Youth activists with the “Just Stop Oil” movement continue to make headlines for staging demonstrations across Europe. First drumming up the mainstream controversy was a can of tomato soup thrown at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers in London, and just yesterday Vermeer’s Girl With A Pearl Earring was subject to a protester’s demonstration when he glued his head to the artwork in The Hague.

The two most pressing questions to be answered when first hearing of such incidents are 1. “is the art okay?” and 2. “why have these people targeted defenseless works of art?” to which the answers are as follows:

1. The artworks are typically okay when they are targets of protests, because museums have the sense to put glass in front of something when it arrives to their location and the curator says “Vincent van Gogh made this” – which these protesters maybe (???) assume when they initiate their demonstration. (Another question, then, is whether this fact skews the intent of such protests further into a performative slant – or entirely superficial, even.)
2. The general explanation for such protests is that we – you, me, every little person and big oil guy – should value the fate of our planet as we know it more so than the aesthetic pleasure conjured from any artwork. Essentially, if you find yourself more upset at the “damaged” art than the destruction of our planet, you’re the problem. (Their philosophy, not mine.)

I won’t denigrate these protesters’ cause – certainly there are decisions to be made about such a crisis that has pitted entire networks and corporations against one another in the free market, in legislature, and apparently now in museums. And not just to resolve adversity; I, too, would like for our planet to stay a breathable, habitable place for centuries to come. But like so many of the ties that bind us to stagnance, it makes for a conversation with too many where-do-we-starts, and too many fingers to point, in something so drastic as undoing the Industrial Revolution.

But where is the sense in maligning the fruits of our beloved artists’ creative labor with this subject? To fall into the debate about climate change – much less, any violent protest of such – is both illogical and undeserved by a beautiful painting from human hands, whether van Gogh’s, Vermeer’s, or Rembrandt’s in case they want to check another Dutch Master off their list.

Some would disagree with me and argue instead that artworks are justified – even viable – targets of protest. Oli Mould, a professor at Royal Holloway in London, asserts in his defense of the demonstrations that “art is an extension of corporate power.” Mould reminds us that corporations and other figures of influence are known to “artwash” their environmental misdeeds by throwing false flags of philanthropy to museums – exactly as is done with schools, charities, and other good-cause organizations. This practice, he argues, renders the artworks to be mere fingers of whichever ulterior hand funded the artwork’s placement. Vandalizing the art is, then, parallel to vandalizing a BP gas station, the walls of a BP corporate office, or one of BP’s oil derricks, and thereby acceptable.

No stranger myself to the myriad of ways which artworks are abused as a means to seed power, I completely disagree with Mould that creative pieces could/should be implicated in any misdoings by the powers that be. No one in the 17th century could have possibly hoped for, expected, or controlled any possibility that this beautiful work they’ve laid into a canvas would someday be…

world famous 😀🎉

placed in a museum  😀🎉 

moved to another museum 😀 … because of an oil company’s donation ❓

attacked by a can of soup 😭🚨

So no, any artworks that found their way into museums by way of donations from oil companies didn’t “have it coming,” nor should they be considered any less worthy of being preserved – at most, you may view the paintings as unfortunate hostages of dirty money, need we make them part of this conversation at all (which we don’t).

Still ironic and worth noting – the choice to throw soup at a van Gogh in particular is slightly funny when *the* Vincent van Gogh Museum itself ceded all funding from oil companies in 2018. But who are we to hope people think twice before throwing soup and gluing hands?