[imagesource: Twitter / Just Stop Oil]

You’re probably wondering what Vincent van Gogh’s painting has to do with the climate crisis.

Very little, it would seem, except shock value for Just Stop Oil to launch a viral protest about the global problems that are arising thanks to climate change.

On Friday, a pair of activists threw a can of what appears to be tomato soup over van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ at the National Gallery in London.

The painting has an estimated value of more than $84 million, per Reuters.

After the soup-throwing, the two activists quickly glued themselves to the wall beneath the gallery’s important treasure, noted The Guardian:

“What is worth more, art or life?” said one of the activists, Phoebe Plummer, 21, from London. She was accompanied by 20-year-old Anna Holland, from Newcastle. “Is it worth more than food? More than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?

The two tied in the tomato soup motif with a plea about the cost of living and the cost of the oil crisis, which is leaving millions of families “cold and hungry”:

The painting is undamaged as it is protected by glass, although, apparently the frame is a little affected, per the gallery’s official statement on the protest.

The group of activists have been staging sit-down protests on roads around central London over the past two weeks, making people stop in traffic to listen to their calls to action. But they seem to have ramped things up with their latest antics.

Here’s a Just Stop Oil spokesperson explaining their modus operandi in more detail:

Perhaps Just Stop Oil was inspired by that other guy claiming to be a climate activist, who smeared cake all over the Mona Lisa painting at the Louvre in Paris earlier this year.

While there is confusion about why van Gogh, who was poor for much of his living life, has been brought into the discussion, there is also criticism that targeting “a beautiful piece of art, which is the best of humanity” just makes people angrier, distracting from the protest’s main point, notes one witness.

Besides, “The typical unthinking individual who doesn’t think about the big issues of the planet is not the kind of person who walks around the National Gallery”, they accurately point out.

The activists were arrested by Met police officers for criminal damage and aggravated trespass and taken into custody at a central London police station.

[source:guardian]