It’s hot out there and environmental activism is rising with the temperature. The latest demonstration hit the Uffizi Gallery this week when protestors glued themselves to Sandro Botticelli’s “Primavera.”
“Primavera” is an Edenic scene of glistening flowers and golden-haired women in filmy, flowing robes reveling in the glories of nature - a romanticized reminder of what we’re losing to forest fires, droughts, and our addiction to fossil fuels.
Another aspect of “Primavera” that makes it an apt choice for the protestors: each figure in the painting is actively participating.
There’s no passivity anywhere.
The demonstration at the Uffizi is only one of many at museums where activists glue themselves to artworks relevant to their cause.
You may remember an early form of this same protest in 2018 at the Louvre when dissenters rallied against the museum’s choice of sponsors such as big oil. In that demonstration, several people lay on the floor beneath Theodore Gericault’s “The “Raft of the Medusa” as if to mimic the dead and dying sailors after their ship sank. Like the raft in the painting, planet earth is also adrift and headed for extinction.
Not taking global warming laying down
Clearly, latter-day environmental activism is taking a more aggressive approach. Last month, protestors at the Courtauld Museum in London, glued themselves to the frame of Van Gogh’s “Peach Trees in Blossom.”
Of course, anything in bloom enlivening the countryside is pertinent; but I wondered if those doing the gluing knew that Van Gogh told his brother “Peach Trees in Blossom” was “probably the best landscape I have done.”
Also, this month, activism to save the planet took another form.
Besides bonding to the frame of John Constable’s “Hay Wain” at the National Gallery in London, demonstrators overlaid the painting with a reimagined rendition showing trees on fire.
None of the activism in England went over well with Britain’s culture minister Nadine Dorries. She tweeted that the protestors were “attention seekers” who put art treasures at risk.
"These protestors should be removed and held responsible for the damage and disruption."
But here’s the thing. No harm has come to any of the paintings that these reformers stick themselves to. Not even the frames are damaged. The glue is reportedly dissolvable without a trace. The supposed “attention seekers” consult with art restorers before they act.
Landscapes are not the only subjects for gluing. Demonstrators at the Royal Academy, London adhered their hands to Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” citing the painter’s love of nature.
Speaking of Da Vinci, think of all the trouble that has gone into preserving the Mona Lisa with its climate-controlled, bulletproof glass case. What’s the point of preserving an artistic heritage if we lose an inheritance of another kind – planet earth?
Back to the future
I can see it now, can’t you? A re-make of the 2001 movie “The “Planet of the Apes.” But this time you don’t see the Statue of Liberty in ruins. Instead, you see the Mona Lisa – forever preserved in impervious glass – sticking out of a wasteland reminding us not of nuclear war this time, but of war, we lost to global warming.
