ARE THE PUNCH ACTIONS OF ECOLOGIST ACTIVISTS IN MUSEUMS PRODUCTIVE ?

A few days before, wearing orange bibs which contrast with the decorum called for by a visit to the Barberini Museum in Potsdam, two activists take off before pouring large jets of yellowish mash on a painting from the Millstones series of the Impressionist painter Claude Monet, depiction of conical structures of wheat that dominated the landscape of the Normandy countryside in 1890.

“We are in the midst of a climate catastrophe,” recites one of the activists after sticking her hand to the wall, squatting in front of the French painter's masterpiece estimated at more than 110 million dollars. "And all that scares you is tomato soup or mashed potatoes on a painting," she says.

The two perpetrators of the coup, affiliated with the pro-climate civil disobedience movement Letzte Generation, echo the question posed by Just Stop Oil activists ten days earlier. “Is art worth more than life? What food? What justice? »

On October 14, two young members of the British organization opposed to the financing of fossil fuels raised the public's ire by spraying Van Gogh's Sunflowers with a tin of Heinz soup before sticking themselves against the wall .

Multiplication of civil disobedience actions

After Van Gogh's "Sunflowers", a painting by Monet or even an Aston Martin concession, activists from the environmental collective Just Stop Oil attacked this Thursday the painting "The Girl with a Pearl Earring" by Johannes Vermeer exhibited at The Hague, at the Mauritshuis museum.. They glued themselves to the glass protecting the canvas before being arrested by the police. Two people approached the painting and a third threw an unknown substance on it, but the work, protected under glass, was not damaged, the Mauritshuis said in a press release.

If this action has gone around the world, it is part of a series of stunts organized by environmental activists who have taken over museums in recent months, from the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow to the National Gallery of Victoria from Melbourne, via the Museo del Novecento in Milan.

For each of these militant actions, the same modus operandi: a hand stuck under the canvas, on the frame or directly on the work. The lock-on tactic, which activists resort to in order not to be able to leave the place of protest on request, is revisited; super glue replaces padlocked chains. Food, meanwhile, has been part of the activists' arsenal during the most recent high-profile stunts.

Whether it's soup or mashed potatoes, the media coverage of these incidents fulfills their mission of publicizing the environmental cause. They also include, by their scandalous effect, their own self-justification, by demonstrating that the attack on art would henceforth scandalize us more than that on the living...

“Art or activism ? »

This is the question the academic Isabelle Barbéris asks in an article published in TheConversation before answering it in the analysis that follows.

The environmental activists, even if their action uses an artistic repertoire, only claim the political dimension of their staging, devoid of any attempt at aestheticization.

The action of activists is also part of this artistic history of performance and the interventions of artists such as Duchamp's Large Glass, action painting, Campbell's soup by Warhol, "les décollages" by the artist Fluxus Volf Vostell, and even the banana stuck on a wall by Maurizio Cattelan…

As for the artification of the gesture of vandalism, it is also an old story that goes back to the historical avant-gardes: imbued with nihilistic irony, the Dadaist tracts and manifestos are stuffed with (metaphorical) calls for scrapping, while Tristan Tzara compared art to “a poet with broken ribs like Picabia who breaks all the bones and the glass roses”. This same Francis Picabia who proclaimed in his Cannibal Manifesto (1920): “What you cannot break will break you, will be your master. »

Recurring topos

The struggle between art and life, the dramatization of the tension between object and gesture are therefore recurring topos of contemporary art.

The history of activism in museums is just as extensive: one can think of Bed Piece (1972) by Chris Burden, but above all of the protest actions of the Fluxus group.

Finally, there was Joseph Beuys, who paved the way for performance that was truly activist, that is, driven by a cause. Beuys is the inventor of artistic and ecological agit-prop, as evidenced by several actions: Bog action (1971), one of the first performances of ecological activism to protest against the drying up of an inland sea in the Netherlands; I like America and America like me (the performance with the coyote); 7000 Chênes presented at Documenta in Kassel in 1982 – to name but a few examples.''

Art “as a launching pad”

“Art is really used as a launching pad, a tool to gain visibility. And it is clear that, from this point of view, it works very well. »

— A quote from Charles de Lacombe, board member of Friends of the Earth France and Alternatiba activist

If it is "destabilizing" to see activists attacking masterpieces, the choice is nonetheless considered. Van Gogh, Monet, Botticelli and Picasso are not responsible for climate change, and environmental activists know this very well, underlines Mr. Lacombe in a paper co-signed with Nicolas Haeringer, director of campaigns for the NGO 350.org.

By disturbing the public, activists are trying to draw attention to its indifference to the inaction of leaders to limit global warming, at a time when all the lights are red. "Abnormal situation, abnormal actions", they sum up, taking up substantially the same speech as Phoebe Plummer of Just Stop Oil, author of the throwing of the soup, who immediately recognized the absurdity of the gesture.

Provoke to rally ? Rather a failure

"These are actions that are very divisive", recognizes Charles de Lacombe, who himself participated in 2019 in a pro-climate campaign aimed at winning portraits of President Emmanuel Macron in the town halls of France in order to denounce the State inaction.

Charles de Lacombe believes that it is too early to decide on the success – or not – of these brilliant strokes. Success and failure will depend, he said, on how the media and activists comment on these actions, helping to shape public opinion.

The specialist in questions of environmental geopolitics, François Gemenne, professor at Sciences Po Paris and member of the IPCC, is among those who worry about the consequences of these actions, which "alienate", in his opinion, "a good part of the public to the cause of the climate".

“The house is burning. Everyone realizes this, and the climate itself is responsible for reminding us of it. It seems to me that there is no longer much point in shouting fire – even with soup or mashed potatoes – and that we must now seek to put out the fire,” he said on Tuesday. on Twitter.

"Furthermore, the ideological dualism which serves as a framework for the intervention undermines the ultimate aim of performance art, often qualified as 'environmental' by the artists themselves: in addition to opposing nature and culture is a potentially dangerous anti-humanism...

To claim that culture would be more protected than nature is, at best, disconcertingly naive and ignorant,” concludes Isabelle Barbéris.