If the planet is doomed, at least food-throwing protestors will amuse us in the process
You might not have agreed with the great logging protests of 40-odd years ago, but at least they made sense.
Drive spikes into trees to disable chainsaws; chain yourself to a spruce; create human chains in front of skidders. They all directly had to do with logging, and an effort to prevent it.
But throwing food onto master works of art and gluing yourself to a wall? What are you trying to protest, Bob Ross?
No, it’s climate change of course, isn’t that obvious? Protesters around the world are throwing everything from tomato soup to mashed potatoes on works by the likes of Van Gogh and Monet, and then, in a final flourish, Super-Gluing their hands to the wall.
The paintings are behind glass, so they aren’t damaged — which is thoughtful, but also reduces the impact of the protest I would think. It would be like if Gavrilo Princip had shot at a painting of Archduke Ferdinand. Not as effective maybe, but you like to think you can get your point across without touching off World War I.
I suppose they’re being successful in that media outlets are covering their hijinks, and publicity is the point. According to The New York Times, “The activists, a man and a woman, each glued a hand to the wall by the painting. Then, the woman shouted in German that the world was in ‘a climate catastrophe, and all you are afraid of is tomato soup or mashed potatoes in a painting.’”
My favorite part? “Then, the woman shouted in German.”
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Pretty amazing, considering she was from Germany and the art museum was in Germany too. What did we expect her to be speaking, Portuguese? I guess a German has to get up pretty early in the morning to fool The New York Times.
Anyway, after the incident, the whole world breathlessly tuned in to bear witness to what must be the most crucial question in the history of our existence: How was the museum staff able to get Super Glue off the protesters’ hands?
I know that’s what I wanted to hear, but maddeningly, the press accounts don’t say. Do art museums have some ultra-secret glue dissolver? Do they have Heloise stashed away in a broom closet somewhere with her magical homespun remedies?
This woman better hope the world is coming to an end so she doesn’t have to explain to the grandkids why Mee-Maw is walking around with a chunk of the German Museum of Art epoxied to her palm.
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I didn’t even know those glues were still around, but they were amazingly adherent to human flesh. In fact, sometimes it seemed that was the only material it worked on. You could try to glue a porcelain handle back onto a teacup and it wouldn’t hold the handle to the cup, but it would hold it to your hand, along with the tube of glue itself, the cap and fragments of the cardboard packaging.
It did work on plastic though, and you knew this because you could only use it once: After you poked a hole in the tube it would glue the cap in place forevermore.
The television ads, which featured a worker-man being held up by his hardhat, which had been glued to a steel girder, swore that it worked on everything, though. I remember this, because as a kid I would lie awake nights wondering what kept the glue from sticking to the inside of the tube.
(This was one of those “If God can do anything, can he make a rock so heavy that he can’t lift it?” questions that would bother 10-year-old boys and probably no one else.)
So I don’t know if the mashed potatoes will change anyone’s mind. Probably not. But if the planet is doomed, at least they will amuse us in the process.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Mashed potatoes, Super Glue, classic art: Climate-change protesting
