hammer blows from green activists on the protective glass of a painting by Velázquez – Libération

2023-11-06 21:53:50

This Monday, November 6, it was the turn of Velázquez’s painting “Venus in the Mirror” to be vandalized by activists from the environmental organization Just Stop Oil, who infiltrated the National Gallery in London. A shock action to denounce the United Kingdom’s oil and gas projects.

The “Venus in the Mirror” had her window broken. This Monday, November 6, two activists from the Just Stop Oil environmental movement hit the protective surface of Diego Velázquez’s painting with a hammer, after entering the National Gallery in London.

This operation is the most spectacular of a month of mobilization launched a week ago by the organization with controversial methods. This calls for an immediate halt to new oil and gas projects in the United Kingdom, going against the policy of the Conservative executive, which wishes to encourage the production of hydrocarbons. Monday alone was marked, according to the police, by around a hundred arrests of members of Just Stop Oil, now familiar with the courts. The two activists, aged 20 and 22, were arrested for damage.

???? SUFFRAGETTE PAINTING SMASHED

???? Our government have revealed plans for MORE oil licences, knowing it will kill millions. In response, two supporters of Just Stop Oil smashed the Rokeby Venus — slashed by Mary Richardson in 1914.

⏱ Deeds, not words: pic.twitter.com/Hk0el26QIt

— Just Stop Oil (@JustStop_Oil) November 6, 2023

Velázquez’s painting, which dates from the mid-17th century, is considered the Spanish painter’s only remaining nude. In 1914, he was slashed with a cleaver by Canadian suffragette Mary Richardson. She was protesting against the imprisonment of another activist for women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom. “Women were not given the right to vote through the ballot box. The time is no longer for words but for actions,” declared the green activists after their action, according to Just Stop Oil.

The National Gallery confirmed the action, saying it had evacuated visitors from the room and called the police, while the “Venus in the Mirror” was removed for examination by museum curators.

Tomato soup on Van Gogh

Last year, other Just Stop Oil activists had already targeted the National Gallery, throwing tomato soup at Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”. At the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, they were glued to the window of “The Girl with a Pearl Earring”, by Vermeer. In both cases, the paintings were protected by glass and had not suffered damage.

Most often, the organization attacks motorists by blocking traffic. This attracted the hostility of the British Conservative government, which toughened legislation to prevent their actions. This Monday, around a hundred demonstrators were arrested for obstructing traffic near Downing Street. Twenty-five others, “mothers and grandmothers” demanding “a better future for their children”, were arrested for the same reason between Whitehall and Trafalgar Square, an area of ​​the capital where the main ministries are located. Just Stop Oil, however, denied that the demonstrators wanted to attack the Cenotaph – a memorial erected at the end of the First World War – as several elected officials have accused.

These new actions come as the British executive has decided to award new hydrocarbon exploration and drilling licenses in the North Sea, which has led it to be accused of going back on its climate commitments. This Monday, he announced that he wanted to enshrine in law the examination of potential new licenses every year, in the name of energy security.

The government, however, assures that it will not give up its objective of carbon neutrality in 2050, but wants to do so in a “pragmatic” and “realistic” way, explaining that the British will continue to consume oil and gas in the years to come, and not wanting to depend on “hostile states” for supplies.

This recent change of heart by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who now poses as a defender of motorists, has been commented on by many political scientists as a way of responding to the concerns of the popular electorate in the run-up to the elections expected next year. The opportunity, also, to stand out from the Labor opposition, which wants to invest massively in green energies.