Left-wing activists have taken to throwing food at paintings in order to make some kind of point. The latest victim is the Mona Lisa, in Paris’s Louvre Museum:
In a video posted on social media, two women with the words “FOOD RIPOSTE” written on their T-shirts can be seen throwing soup at the glass protecting Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece and passing under a security barrier to get closer to the painting.
We were at the Louvre in November. Security around the Mona Lisa is relatively tight, and it seems always to be surrounded by a crowd of people. But you aren’t supposed to be able to get too close to it.
“What’s the most important thing?” they shouted. “Art, or the right to healthy and sustainable food?”
“Our farming system is sick. Our farmers are dying at work,” they added.
Usually the perpetrators of these crimes are climate activists. This pair added food to their agenda. I am not sure why farmers are supposed to be dying, but I would guess that the number of farmers who support this group is approximately zero.
The Riposte Alimentaire (Food Retaliation) group describes itself as a collective dedicated to advocating for action on climate change and sustainable agriculture. On its website, the group said the French government is breaking its climate commitments and called for the equivalent of France’s state-sponsored healthcare system to be put in place to give people better access to food while providing farmers a decent income.
In fact, French farmers, like those in a number of other European countries, have launched a major protest which largely targets regulations that are allegedly climate-related.
Attacking paintings has become weirdly popular with left-wingers:
It was the latest attack on the da Vinci masterpiece, which resides in the French capital’s Louvre Museum. Someone threw a custard pie at the painting in May 2022 but the glass casing ensured it came to no harm.
The Mona Lisa is not the only famous work of art to be targeted by activists. Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” was targeted at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague in October 2022 when two climate activists glued themselves to the painting and the adjoining wall while another threw a thick red substance. The artwork, which lies behind glass, was undamaged.
Environmental activists splashed tomato soup on Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at the National Gallery in London in 2022 while activists from the Last Generation group hurled mashed potato onto Monet’s “Les Meules” (Haystacks) at the Barberini Museum in Potsdam.
There have been other instances, too. It wouldn’t be hard to discourage these “activists.” It wouldn’t take long prison terms; if a couple of them did six months of hard time, such protests would disappear.
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