Turnaround. After being released in June 2024, two activists from the environmentalist collective Riposte Alimentaire were convicted this Tuesday, January 14 on appeal in Lyon for “light degradation”. They had doused a painting by Monet with soup, Springin February 2024 at the Beaux-Arts in Lyon.
In the first instance, the two young women, prosecuted for having “deliberately defaced Claude Monet’s painting Spring»had been released, on the grounds that the canvas, under glass, had not suffered any damage. A decision which the prosecution appealed.
In the second instance, the court of appeal declared them guilty after reclassifying the facts as one “less serious offense”, and sentenced them to a fine of 300 euros, suspended for one of them, said defense lawyer Adeline Dubost. They were also acquitted of the offense of refusing to submit to the collection of biological material.
Tuesday’s decision “questions in relation to decisions of other jurisdictions on the use of freedom of expression and its limits”, reacted Me Dubost, who argues that nature “policy” of a gesture, therefore falling within freedom of expression.
Food response, which presents itself as a “French civil resistance campaign”, campaigns for the establishment of a system similar to social security which would allow everyone to access sustainable food. The environmental movement had demanded similar action against the Mona Lisa. In January 2024, activists sprayed Leonardo Da Vinci’s work with pumpkin soup.
Several museums targeted
This mode of action has been used several times by activists in several museums around the world. Carefully protected since 2005, the Mona Lisa had thus been the target of a cream pie in May 2022.
A few months later, in October of the same year, two young women from the group Just Stop Oil also projected the contents of two cans of tomato soup onto Van Gogh’s painting. Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London, before pressing himself against the wall shouting: “Which is more valuable, art or life?”
Activists also glued their hands to a Goya painting in Madrid, smearing red and black paint on the Plexiglas cage surrounding the Little Dancer of 14 years old by Degas in Washington, or even spreading mashed potatoes on a masterpiece by Claude Monet in Potsdam, near Berlin.
