To the Point: Why Are Climate Activists Attacking Art?鈥
To the Point provides insights from AU faculty experts on timely questions covering current events, politics, business, culture, science, health, sports, and more. Each week we ask one professor just one critical question about what鈥檚 on our minds.
听
On April 27, 2023, two protestors walked into the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and smeared black and red paint on the Plexiglas case housing Edgar Degas鈥檚 famed Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (1878-1881). Sitting on the floor in front of the sculpture, the protestors suggested that its young subject was symbolic of all children who would suffer the consequences of government inaction on climate change.
Little Dancer was just one of many works of art defaced by climate protestors in a series of uncoordinated attacks throughout the Western world that began in summer 2022 and continue to this day. Just last week, activists threw tomato soup on Van Gogh鈥檚 Sunflowers at the National Gallery of Art in London.
We turned to art history professor Nika Elder to shed more light on this topic.
Why are climate activists attacking art? What is the history behind this practice, and does it spark change?
The history of iconoclasm can help put these protests鈥攁s well as their failure to marshal support for their cause鈥攊nto perspective. Since ancient times, people have attacked works of art as symbols of their ideological opponents and enemies. Initially the practice targeted icons for religious reasons, but, by the modern era, its focus became political adversaries.
In 1776, a crowd in New York City removed an equestrian statue of George III from its pedestal. In the wake of the Civil War, freed people disfigured and repurposed portraits of planters and enslavers. In 1974, artist and activist Tony Shafrazi spraypainted 鈥淜ill Lies All鈥 on Picasso鈥檚 Guernica to protest Nixon鈥檚 release of a man convicted for his role in the My Lai Massacre. And, as recently as 2020, among other official and unofficial actions executed in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, British protestors removed a statue of slave trader Edward Colston and dumped it into Bristol Harbour. In each of these cases, protestors targeted works of art that depicted their political enemies. (In Shafrazi鈥檚 case the target was war itself, whose horrors Guernica had come to symbolize.)
Paintings and sculptures in museums throughout the Western world have become the most recent targets in this long history of iconoclasm. What sets apart the actions of contemporary climate activists from most earlier instances of iconoclasm is their focus on paintings that represent the subject that they are so desperately trying to defend.听
In addition to well-known masterpieces like the Mona Lisa, Girl with a Pearl Earring, and The Scream, many of the paintings that they defaced were depictions of the natural world: works such as Monet鈥檚 Haystacks, Constable鈥檚 The Hay Wain, and Van Gogh鈥檚 Peach Trees in Blossom and The Sower.
The attacks were meant to urge the public to ask themselves why they are more concerned about paintings of landscapes than about nature itself. But, by all accounts, their efforts failed; their actions alienated the public rather than drawing them to their cause.听
Rather than their enemies, the activists targeted their allies. For hundreds of years, works of art鈥擟onstable鈥檚 Hay Wain among them鈥攈ave drawn attention to the environmental and human consequences of unchecked industry, climate change, and their consequences. To decipher their messages and heed their warnings, the activists should have given them the same attention and care that they would like to see the public grant the people and places that the paintings represent.
About Professor Nika Elder
Nika Elder specializes in North 猫咪社区app art from the colonial period to the present, including African-猫咪社区app art and the history of photography. Her current research and courses examine the mutually constitutive relationship between art and race throughout modern 猫咪社区app history. Her first book, William Harnett鈥檚 Curious Objects: Still-Life Painting after the 猫咪社区app Civil War (2022, University of California Press), charts the politics of painting in the Gilded Age. She is currently at work on a new project that locates and interprets the work of 18th-century Anglo-猫咪社区app painter John Singleton Copley in the context of the transatlantic slave trade. In addition to these book projects, Prof. Elder has published essays on contemporary artists Lorna Simpson (Art Journal, spring 2018), Kara Walker, and Fred Wilson (The Routledge Companion to African 猫咪社区app Art).
Her research has been supported by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library, the Amon Carter Museum of 猫咪社区app Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of 猫咪社区app Art, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, the Wyeth Foundation, and the Smithsonian 猫咪社区app Art Museum. From 2022-2024, she is serving as Field Editor for 猫咪社区app Art for caa.reviews, and she was chair of the 2023 Feminist Art History Conference at 猫咪社区app University.
For more on Prof. Elder's research and teaching, see .
Image: Edgar Degas, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 1878-1881. Pigmented beeswax, clay, metal armature, rope, paintbrushes, human hair, silk and linen ribbon, cotton faille bodice, cotton and silk tutu, linen slippers, on wooden base, 38 15/16 x 13 11/16 x 13 7/8 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1999.80.28.