Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' Targeted with Soup Throwing... Radical Environmental Group Commits Another Outrage

Damage to Sunflower Oil Paintings from 1888 and 1889

On the 27th (local time), the British radical environmental activist group, which has sparked controversy by damaging world cultural heritage sites to draw public attention, once again poured soup on Vincent van Gogh's famous painting "Sunflowers," the BBC reported.

Photo by AFP Union [Image source=AFP Yonhap News]

On this day, they poured orange soup on two oil paintings of sunflowers painted by van Gogh in 1888 and 1889 at the National Gallery in London. Three activists belonging to the environmental group Just Stop Oil (JSO) who committed this act were arrested at the scene.

Photo by AFP Union [Image source=AFP Yonhap News]

A video posted by JSO on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) showed activists ignoring the audience's pleas and pouring soup on the paintings. They referred to their detained fellow activists as "prisoners of conscience" and claimed, "Future generations will think these prisoners of conscience stood on the right side of history." The National Gallery plans to retrieve and examine the artworks to determine whether the paintings were damaged by the soup.

The group also staged a performance in October 2022 at the same location, pouring tomato soup on van Gogh's works to demand that the UK government halt new oil and gas projects. Fortunately, the paintings were not damaged, though the frames suffered minor damage. Nevertheless, the UK court handed down severe sentences last month, sentencing two activists involved in that performance to two years and 20 months in prison, respectively.

In June, they protested by sprinkling orange cornflour on the prehistoric site Stonehenge located on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, southern England. Stonehenge, a megalithic monument built about 4,500 years ago, is listed as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site. At the time, JSO stated, "Continuing to burn coal, oil, and gas will cause millions of deaths," and "We demand that the next UK government sign a legally binding treaty to phase out fossil fuel use by 2030." Rajan Naidu (73), who participated in the protest, said, "The orange cornflour used for visual effect will soon be washed away by rain, but the urgency for effective government action to mitigate the climate crisis will not disappear," urging the government to "sign the treaty."