BERLIN — Local weather activists in Austria on Tuesday attacked a well-known portray by artist Gustav Klimt with a black, oily liquid and one then glued himself to glass defending the portray’s body.
Members of the group Final Technology Austria tweeted that they had focused the 1915 portray “Dying and Life” on the Leopold Museum in Vienna to protest their authorities’s use of fossil energies.
After throwing the liquid on the portray, which wasn’t broken, one activist was pushed away by a museum guard whereas one other glued his hand to the glass over the portray’s body.
The group defended the protest, saying in a tweet that they have been protesting “oil and gasoline drilling,” which they known as “a dying sentence to society.”
In a video of the incident, which the group posted on-line, one of many activists will be heard shouting that “we’ve recognized about the issue for 50 years — we should lastly act, in any other case the planet can be damaged.”
“Cease the fossil gasoline destruction. We’re racing right into a local weather hell,” he added.
After the assault, police arrived on the museum and the black liquid was rapidly cleaned off the glass defending the portray, Austria Press Company reported.
Regardless of thorough controls on the museum’s entrance, the activists succeeded in bringing the liquid inside by hiding it in a sizzling water bottle beneath their garments, the company reported.
The museum’s restoration crew mentioned later that whereas the portray itself hadn’t been harmed, the harm to the glass and safety framing, in addition to to the wall and ground, was “evident and vital,” APA reported.
Hans-Peter Wipplinger, the director of the Leopold Museum, instructed APA that the issues of the local weather activists have been justified, “however attacking artistic endeavors is unquestionably the unsuitable strategy to implement the focused purpose of stopping the anticipated local weather collapse.”
He appealed to the group to search out different methods to make their issues recognized.
Austria’s tradition minister additionally expressed understanding for “the issues and likewise the desperation” of the activists, however criticized their type of protest.
“I don’t consider that actions like these are purposeful, as a result of the query arises whether or not they don’t moderately result in extra lack of expertise than to extra consciousness of the local weather disaster,” Andrea Mayer mentioned.
“From my viewpoint, accepting the danger of irrevocable harm to artistic endeavors is the unsuitable strategy to go,” the minister added. “Artwork and tradition are allies within the battle in opposition to local weather disaster, not adversaries.”
The Klimt work is an oil on canvas portray within the Artwork Nouveau model depicting dying on the left facet and a gaggle of partially bare, hugging folks on the suitable facet. It’s one of many newest items of artwork to be focused by local weather activists to attract consideration to world warming.
Completely different activist teams have staged quite a few demonstrations in latest months, together with blocking streets and throwing mashed potatoes at a Claude Monet portray in Germany.
The British group Simply Cease Oil threw tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in London’s Nationwide Gallery final month.
Simply Cease Oil activists additionally glued themselves to the body of an early copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Final Supper” at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, and to John Constable’s “The Hay Wain” within the Nationwide Gallery.
