What's Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa got to do with food sustainability?

The attack on the Mona Lisa is not the first time that environmental activists have tried to deface masterpieces. (Image via Wikimedia Commons)

Earlier this week, two environmental activists entered the Louvre museum in Paris and sprayed pumpkin soup on the Mona Lisa, the most famous painting of all time. The two women then shouted: “What is more important? Art or the right to healthy and sustainable food?” They belong to a group called Riposte Alimentaire—Food Counterattack.

Thankfully, since the Mona Lisa smiles at us from behind a glass wall, Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece was not damaged. One and a half hours later, she reappeared in public, after the glass had been cleaned.

Mona Lisa (c. 1503–1516). Oil on poplar panel, 77 × 53 cm. Louvre, Paris (Image via Wikimedia Commons)

Any sane person would ask: What on earth does great art have to do with climate change or global warming or healthy food? In fact, what does great art have anything to do with anything other than what it is—great art? At its best, a piece of art is a living force that can set off a complex set of emotions. A friend of mine wept when she saw Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for the first time at the National Gallery in London. I have spent hours looking at the fairy-tale-like paintings of Marc Chagall and the intricately detailed poetic surrealism of Ganesh Pyne and felt a sort of happiness that I must have experienced only when I was a child.

The attack on the Mona Lisa is not the first time that environmental activists have tried to deface masterpieces. In fact, you can almost call it a trend. It’s not even the first time Mona Lisa herself has been targeted. In 2022, a man smeared cake over the glass, shouting “Think of the planet!” The same year, two activists from the Just Stop Oil group emptied cans of tomato soup over the glass protecting Sunflowers in the National Gallery.

These attacks have been taking place all over the West. In October 2022, protesters from the German branch of an organisation called Last Generation flung potato mash at a Claude Monet painting in a museum in Potsdam. A few days later, a man in glued his head to the glass protecting the Dutch master Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring in a museum in The Hague. A second activist poured tomato soup on it.

In November 2022, two Extinction Rebellion activists each glued a hand to the frames of two paintings by Goya in the Prado museum in Madrid. In June 2023, in Stockholm, activists smeared red paint and glued their hands to the glass covering another Monet work. In April 2023, climate activists attacked a Degas wax sculpture in a Washington DC museum, smearing its plexiglas enclosure with red and black paint. In November 2023, Just Stop Oil protesters smashed the glass cover of a Velazquez painting at the National Gallery with hammers. The works of Picasso and Botticelli have also been victims.

All these vandals have said that it is their duty to make humanity aware that we are more concerned with paintings than the planet. After the attempted defacement of the Degas sculpture, the group that claimed credit, something called Declare Emergency, announced on Instagram: “Today, through non-violent rebellion, we temporarily defiled a work of art to evoke the very real children whose suffering is certain if deadly fossil fuel companies continue to mine coal, oil and gas from the soil.”

Take a look at the names of these activist groups. Just Stop Oil, Last Generation, Declare Emergency, Extinction Rebellion. Obviously, these people believe that the world is about to end unless all of humanity gives up everything that we see as civilization and progress, from space satellites to the washing machine, and turn vegan. Interestingly, some of them also support the killing off of all cattle on earth because they produce a lot of methane that heats up the planet.

One protester, after throwing soup on Sunflowers, screamed: “What is worth more? Art or life?” As if we have to make a binary choice. This is plain stupid.

But the eco-terrorists also speak in many voices. The Italian franchise of Last Generation tweeted: “If the climate collapses, all of civilization as we know it collapses. There will be no more tourism, no museums, no art.” Margaret Klein Salamon, executive director of Climate Emergency Fund, told the media: “There is literally no way to protect these priceless works of art from the climate… They're not protesting the museum or have a problem with the art. They're making a desperate statement that we are in danger.”

We live in strange times. Mona Lisa is attacked because she may be in danger from fossil fuels. Actually, the painting has remained in great shape because of technology that employs fossil fuels at some point or the other. She is illuminated by an LED lamp specially developed to minimize ultraviolet radiations and enhance the colours of the painting. A state-of-the-art air treatment system enables air to circulate through the glass case that protects her and helps to maintain the right relative humidity and temperature levels in the surrounding walls. Once a year, the case is opened, and all monitoring equipment and installed devices are carefully checked to ensure the Mona Lisa is being cared for.

“Many criticize our actions because… maybe they don't understand that the inconvenience we created (in the museums) is nothing compared to one billion climate migrants and to the many deaths that the climate crisis is causing already,” says some other spokesperson.

Cults are nothing new in human history, but these attacks on works of art are terrorism. George Bernard Shaw defined murder as the most extreme form of criticism. Similarly, terrorism is the most extreme form of advertising. The basic aim of the terrorist is to gain recognition; he and his cause are dependent on the publicity they receive. Terrorism works only when a handful of persons inflicting violence on a relatively small number of people receives publicity for its demands and ideology. These eco-vandals trying to deface works of art are hankering for attention—just like the men and women who take off their clothes and streak across the field during Test matches in England and Australia.

Attention-seeking behaviour should be recognised for what it is and given the correct response, which is a yawn. But when these people attack works of art, among the finest achievements of human as a species, they must pay for it. Most of the paintings have been saved because they were inside glass cases, but there's no denying the vandals were on a mission of desecration—maybe they wished that the glass cases were not there. This is a crime against humanity.