Let them eat cake
Today a protestor threw a piece of cake at the Mona Lisa, and yelled these words in French.
“There are people trying to destroy the planet. Think of the Earth, just think about it.”
The headlines from most media organisations gloss over this message, and instead focus on “it was thrown by a man disguised as an old woman”, or their arrest.
Disappointingly, even the art reporters didn’t take a particular interest in a critical reading of the protest–except a light jaunt with Ocula through notable art protests from history.
Most outlets focused on the security response, the police taking the protestor for psychiatric assessment, or claims that people only vandalise art to try to get famous. There was even one pearl-clutching article comparing harmless climate cake-throwing to artworks being destroyed by the Nazis.
Absurdism has been a tool utilised by protestors since protests began. Perhaps less commonly in previous years, but it’s rise in popularity can be charted alongside the rise of social media. Sometimes it’s the only option available, because earnest protest is illegal, like the performance artists of Russia, or it’s a choice, because being earnest is ineffective against your audience, like Birds aren’t Real. Sometimes it’s a tool for genuine good, like Satanic Temple protestors requesting abortion pills in Texas under a religious exemption.
I don’t believe that the protestor requires a psychiatric assessment. On the contrary, in a world that is absurd enough to let a preventable climate catastrophe destroy itself for the sakes’ of the shareholders, where there’s nothing any individual one of us can do to stop it, perhaps throwing cakes at symbols of wealth and power is the only sane thing to do.
A critical unpacking of the Louvre protest
Aside from the validity of absurdist protest, I tend to think that deliberate performances in an art gallery ought to be read under the same lens we read art.
Sure, Mona is dull and boring, but she gets serious global attention. The video at the top of this post barely shows her, and mostly shows the incident as perceived through the lenses of all of the other phones held by various onlookers trying to capture the moment. She earns the Louvre around 110 million euro per year in admission fees.
Many argue that she is only famous because of her century-old theft, subsequent media reporting and eventual return. Perhaps, not only are vandals reliant on the Mona Lisa for fame–she’s also reliant on them to build and attain such cultural capital. She’s not the best painting in the world–just the most recognisable. Like all art, her value is culturally constructed.
The protestor says “all artists think of the earth”–pointing out the contrasts between working artists, who are overtly aware of the context and causes they live and work in and often paid very little, whilst the art market is controlled by the uber-wealthy, who are sending the world closer to the climate abyss.
Art museum philanthropy is popular for those who wish to have a cause that isn’t seen as politically controversial. The contrast between art workers and art marketeers is particularly stark. The Louvre itself has been privy to these controversies, and finally in 2019 cut ties with the Sackler family, after protests against their role in the opioid epidemic.
And now, for the cake
The phrase ‘let them eat cake’ is commonly attributed to Marie Antoinette, but the original speaker is not known, except that it is attributed to a “great princess”, who is French. The phrase is symbolic of a ruler who is out-of-touch with the needs of the people.
In a world full of leaders convinced that emissions trading and electric cars will solve our burning planet, whilst denying real strategies like economic deceleration, it certainly does feel like a ‘let them eat cake’ moment.
Will it make them listen? Probably not.
Does it briefly unite us in a world where people burn endless dinosaur bits to go see a painting that isn’t even Van Gogh’s best work? Hell yeah.
