Last generation Austria | via Reuters Climate activists in Austria on Tuesday attacked a famous painting by the artist Gustav Klimt with a black, oily liquid, and one was then glued to glass that protects the painting’s frame. Members of the group Last Generation Austria tweeted that they had targeted the 1915 “Death and Life” painting at the Leopold Museum in Vienna to protest their government’s use of fossil fuels. After throwing the liquid at the painting, which was not damaged, one activist was pushed back by a museum guard, while another stuck his hand in the glass above the painting’s frame. The group defended the protest, saying in a tweet that they were protesting “oil and gas drilling,” which it called a “death sentence for society.” In a video of the incident, which the group posted online, one of the activists can be heard shouting that “we’ve known about the problem for 50 years — we finally have to act or the planet will break.” “Stop the destruction of fossil fuels. We are fighting a climate hell,” he added. After the attack, police arrived at the museum and the black liquid was quickly cleaned from the glass protecting the painting, the Austrian Press Agency reported. Despite thorough checks at the entrance to the museum, the activists managed to bring the liquid inside by hiding it in a hot water bottle under their clothes, the agency said. The museum’s restoration team later said that while the painting itself was undamaged, damage to the glass and safety frame, as well as the wall and floor, was “obvious and significant,” the APA reported. Hans-Peter Wipplinger, director of the Leopold Museum, told APA that climate activists’ concerns were justified, “but attacking works of art is certainly the wrong way to realize the targeted goal of preventing the predicted climate collapse.” . He appealed to the group to find other ways to make their concerns known. Austria’s culture minister also expressed understanding for the activists’ “concerns but also despair” but criticized the form of their protest. “I do not believe that such actions are appropriate, because the question arises whether they do not lead to a greater lack of understanding rather than a greater awareness of climate catastrophe,” said Andrea Mayer. “In my view, accepting the risk of irreversible damage to works of art is the wrong way to go,” the minister added. “Art and culture are allies in the fight against climate catastrophe, not rivals.” Klimt’s work is an Art Nouveau oil painting on canvas depicting death on the left side and a group of partially nude people embracing on the right side. It is one of the latest works of art to be targeted by climate activists to draw attention to global warming. Different activist groups have staged numerous protests in recent months, including blocking roads and throwing mash at a Claude Monet painting in Germany. British band Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup at Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ at London’s National Gallery last month. Just Stop Oil campaigners also stuck to the frame of an early copy of Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’ at London’s Royal Academy of Arts and John Constable’s ‘The Hay Wain’ at the National Gallery.
