Vox hot take examines pros and cons (but mostly pros) of vandalizing great works of art in the name of saving the planet

Last week a group of climate change activists with too much soup and free time vandalized a Van Gogh painting at London’s National Gallery. The painting, “Sunflowers,” was hit with tomato soup by activists who then glued themselves to the wall and unfortunately weren’t just left there:

NOW – Climate activists defile Van Gogh's Sunflowers at the National Gallery and glued themselves to the wall.pic.twitter.com/XgRDqyEqUO

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) October 14, 2022

That’s indefensible, right?

Well, not so fast! That’s where the hottest of hot takes from Vox comes in to examine the situation:

The thorny brilliance of throwing soup on an $81 million painting to save the planet https://t.co/csPvEBcQcr

— Vox (@voxdotcom) October 20, 2022

When I heard that the painting was unharmed, my reaction rapidly shifted from “This is horrifying” to “This might be the best protest ever.” At least, it’s one I’ll be thinking about for a long time to come.

There’s a huge difference between a climate protest that destroys art in the name of saving the planet and a climate protest that threatens the destruction of art but doesn’t actually go through with it. The former treats the art and the cultural value we ascribe to it as incidental in the fight to save the planet, ignoring that a civilization without art is an incredible loss.

The second kind of protest, however, raises all kinds of questions in the absence of actual destruction. What would it have meant if we had lost Sunflowers? Such an act would have generated a period of international collective mourning, a unified sense of loss that no amount of urgency over the climate crisis has been able to equal. But what could the loss of one great painting — the reported $81 million value of which derives not only from its beauty and historical import but from the deeply subjective and often-fraught methods of the art market — mean to a civilization that doesn’t exist? The prospect of that loss, averted, allows us to seriously confront the degree to which we as a society collectively dismiss and downplay climate change.

“What’s art worth if there’s nobody here to enjoy it because they all died from climate change?” There’s logical leaps and then there’s whatever that is.