Activists Glue Themselves To Van Gogh Art To Protest Climate Change Apathy
Image via Just Stop Oil
Not a pretty picture: A Vincent van Gogh landscape at the Courtauld Gallery in London set the stage for a protest to stop new oil and gas efforts by the UK government, at the same time calling for the art world to join in on the fight to save the planet.
On Thursday afternoon, two environmental activists from the Just Stop Oil advocacy group glued themselves to the frame of Van Gogh’s Peach Trees in Blossom (1889), a painting of a scenic countryside in Arles, France, that the post-Impressionist produced just weeks after he cut off his ear.
The young climate campaigners were hoping to paint a picture of the bleak outlook for the Provence region that the Van Gogh work is portrayed in. According to French news outlets, the area is facing threats of drought, having suffered extreme heatwaves in May and June. This year, in fact, saw the hottest May on record in the nation.
To make way for impending drought, the French government has limited the country’s water usage.
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“We’re here because the UK government is pushing through 40 new fossil-fuel projects… My generation has no other choice but to take this kind of action,” declared Louis McKechnie, 21, who was joined by Emily Brocklebank, 24, in the protest.
The group wants art and cultural institutions to stay silent no longer by closing their galleries and getting their directors to pressure the government to call off gas and oil projects.
“We are either in resistance or we are complicit,” said McKechnie in a statement.
Image via Just Stop Oil
The gallery told Hyperallergic that the space that houses the Van Gogh painting was closed to the public throughout the day.
A similar stunt in which Just Stop Oil supporters adhered themselves to Horatio McCulloch’s My Heart’s in the Highlands (1860) in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in Scotland was carried out just the day before, concluding with the arrest of five members of the group.
Art preserves the sanctity of its subjects, and through it, the group hopes to show how these sites might lose their beauty if action isn’t taken.
[via Hyperallergic and Forbes, cover image via Just Stop Oil]
