Over the past few days, I have been pon­der­ing what would hap­pen if some­one threw a cup of chan­na at a Caz­abon paint­ing as a form of protest.

Now to be sure this ques­tion is not in­tend­ed as a dog whis­tle or a call for ac­tion. Far from it.

And it is al­so cer­tain­ly not some ran­dom mus­ing.

But rather it is a ques­tion that has arisen giv­en the spate of protests that have been tak­ing place around the world re­cent­ly.

One of the most wide­ly re­port­ed of these protests took place on Oc­to­ber 14 at the Na­tion­al Gallery in Lon­don when two ac­tivists from the Just Stop Oil move­ment threw toma­to soup over Vin­cent van Gogh’s Sun­flow­ers paint­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to The Guardian UK’s re­port of the in­ci­dent, there were gasps, roars, and a shout of “Oh my gosh!” when the two sup­port­ers of the cli­mate protest group threw the liq­uid over the paint­ing be­fore glu­ing them­selves to the wall be­neath the art­work.

Van Gogh’s Sun­flow­ers, is one of the gallery’s most im­por­tant trea­sures, and for­tu­nate­ly was pro­tect­ed by glass so there was no sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to the work of art.

“What is worth more, art or life?” one of the ac­tivists shout­ed ac­cord­ing to news­pa­per re­ports.

“Is it worth more than food? More than jus­tice? Are you more con­cerned about the pro­tec­tion of a paint­ing or the pro­tec­tion of our plan­et and peo­ple?

The Just Stop Oil civ­il re­sis­tance move­ment is de­mand­ing that the UK gov­ern­ment halts all fu­ture li­cens­ing for the de­vel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion of fos­sil fu­els.

But this ac­tion was not lim­it­ed to Lon­don.

Fol­low­ing the soup­ing of Van Gogh, Ger­man off­shoot, Let­zte Gen­er­a­tion (Last Gen­er­a­tion), mir­rored the ac­tion by cov­er­ing a Claude Mon­et paint­ing with mashed pota­toes to protest against what it claims is the fail­ure of the Berlin gov­ern­ment to take dras­tic ac­tion to pro­tect the cli­mate.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Eu­ronews Cul­ture a spokesper­son for Just Stop Oil Alex De Kon­ing, was asked to re­spond to those who have been deem­ing the ac­tions tak­en by the group as “ob­nox­ious van­dal­ism” or who ques­tion the rel­e­vance of Van Gogh’s paint­ing, for in­stance, in the fight against cli­mate change.

“If I got a pound for every time some­one has asked me that ques­tion, I’d be able to af­ford my en­er­gy bills! (Laughs) A lot of peo­ple are say­ing that we’re alien­at­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic but ac­tu­al­ly, the head of BP says he has more cash than he knows what to do with dur­ing a cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis.

“Peo­ple can’t af­ford to heat up a tin of soup. The gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to ac­cel­er­ate fos­sil fu­el pro­duc­tion, which will kill mil­lions of peo­ple, and is fail­ing to ad­dress the worst cost of liv­ing cri­sis this coun­try has ever seen. If any­thing, the gov­ern­ment is alien­at­ing the gen­er­al pub­lic way more than we are.

“At the mo­ment, we’re grow­ing a lot and get­ting a lot of sup­port be­cause peo­ple know how ur­gent the sit­u­a­tion is and how des­per­ate it is. We’re pick­ing up from mas­sive re­sis­tance move­ments in the past, and it works. We know they work. That’s why we’re do­ing the same.”

In that wide-rang­ing in­ter­view De Kon­ing was al­so asked if he con­sid­ered cul­ture to be mean­ing­less at this point in time.

“There’s still a place for cul­ture. Art has a lot of pow­er, and all the great artists in the past were rad­i­cal and for­ward-think­ing, and yet that’s not be­ing ad­dressed in the same way in the cli­mate cri­sis. There are still peo­ple who are way more out­raged about that ac­tion (the soup poured on Van Gogh, which was pro­tect­ed by a glass screen) than the 33 mil­lion peo­ple in Pak­istan be­ing dis­placed by floods. I’m from Scot­land— that’s six times the pop­u­la­tion of my en­tire coun­try who have lost their homes and their liveli­hoods. It’s re­al­ly sad, yet more peo­ple are out­raged about throw­ing soup at glass.”

As this coun­try cel­e­brat­ed its Di­a­mond Ju­bilee we turned to art to rem­i­nisce about our 60 years as an in­de­pen­dent coun­try.

Pre­sent­ed by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in col­lab­o­ra­tion with An­gos­tu­ra Ltd, the Cen­tral Bank, and First Cit­i­zens a lo­cal art ex­hi­bi­tion ti­tled “Pa­tri Art Ism” was held at three of this coun­try’s Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en build­ings -Mille Fleur, White­hall, and Cas­tle Kil­lar­ney.

The ex­hibits were all free to the pub­lic.

Thank­ful­ly all of the art was left un­scathed.

Now truth be told the dam­ag­ing of valu­able art­work as a protest is noth­ing new.

“Of course, the risk of protest­ing with­in an art mu­se­um is that the protest it­self might be con­strued as a work of art it­self—and in many ways, it is. What is a protest if not po­lit­i­cal the­atre?” writer Kady Rith Ashcraft asked.

At the very Na­tion­al Gallery in Lon­don in 1914 Mary Richard­son slashed Ve­lazquez’s Roke­by Venus.

Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s Mona Lisa, one of the most recog­nis­able paint­ings in the world, has suf­fered mul­ti­ple at­tacks with the lat­est cake be­ing smeared on it in May by a cli­mate change pro­test­er who was dressed as an el­der­ly woman.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports the at­tack­er was tack­led by se­cu­ri­ty and dragged away from the gallery shout­ing in French: “Think of the plan­et! There are peo­ple who are de­stroy­ing the plan­et, think about that! That’s why I did it!” ac­cord­ing to a trans­la­tion from The Art News­pa­per.

While all these protests have cer­tain­ly achieved the goal of catch­ing the world’s at­ten­tion, have they been suc­cess­ful?

The re­al ques­tion is: why do we need to throw food be­fore we tack­le the is­sue of cli­mate change se­ri­ous­ly?