The Madrid Naval Museum was the scene of yet another episode of “climate activism”. And what does climate activism consist of, carried out by “anti-capitalist collectives” fighting for “climate justice” embargoed by the “global north”? It consists, of course, of destroying works of art shamelessly displayed in museums in the “global north”. When you don’t have the resources of Greta Thunberg but you have the same cross-eyed vigilante fervor and a couple of cans of paint, that’s what you do.
On the 12th of October – Dia de La Hispanidad, the Day of Columbus’ Arrival in America, or, we are led to assume, Day of the Beginning of Climate Injustice –, the object of the attack was the painting First Tribute to Columbusfrom 1892, by José Garnelo y Alda, a Valencian painter, friend and contemporary of Joaquin Sorolla, who, as a professor at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, influenced Picasso and Dali.
It is a painting measuring six meters by three and weighs 150 kilos. On the screen, the navigator has a very high cross, surrounded by his traveling companions; and the Indians receive him, bowing, we presume, before the cross. What were Columbus, José Garnello y Alda and the Madrid Naval Museum waiting for, if not the righteous wrath of the hysterical-climatic group Futuro Vegetal?
Futuro Vegetal is, according to them, “a collective of civil disobedience and direct action that fights against the Climate Crisis through a plant-based agri-food system”. This vegan option is perfectly legitimate: the red paint used was certainly made from beetroot and red fruits, organic, organic and cruelty-free…just like Adolfo Hitler, one of the first vegans and also a promoter of a “vegetable future”; a fact perhaps unknown to the two activists, but what do facts matter? The important thing is that, with this decisive action, Victoria Domingo and Luna Lagos were, as Jorge Bustos, columnist for The Worlda “Save the planet, fucking colonialist pictures”, in a brilliant two in one.
Furthermore, fortunately for the Planet and for the various causes of an increasingly dynamic and fluctuating New Left, these intrepid flotillas from the Madrid Naval Museum are part of a wider movement. So much so that the inventory of heroic deeds against climate injustice and Western capitalism (as museologically expressed in offensive works of art) already includes the vandalization of paintings by Botticelli, Van Gogh, Monet, Vermeer, Klimt, Picasso and Da Vinci.
However, until now, none of the “liberation groups” that claimed the attacks (Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil or Last Generation) had presented a name as expressive as “Futuro Vegetal” – not even our “Climáximo”.
The financing of these “collectives”, which would only be laughable if they were not also tragic, comes from lobbies such as the Climate Emergency Fund, which counts among its patrons Aileen Getty (the granddaughter of J. Paul Getty, oil billionaire, who thus embraced the mission of atoning for the family’s eco-sins).
However, in the aftermath of the attack in Madrid, and always according to The Worlda team of restorers, with support from the Prado Museum, had to move forward in an emergency to prevent the paint from drying out, worsening the damage. It is estimated that the restoration will take at least a year and a half. And it’s still not certain that it will work.
Political scientist and writer
The author writes accordingly
with the old spelling
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