van Gogh, Vincent

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    Just Stop Oil Activists Sentenced for Attack on Van Gogh Painting

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    A judge sentenced two climate protesters to prison terms for throwing soup at the work in 2022, an act he called “criminally idiotic.”One morning in October 2022, Anna Holland and Phoebe Plummer, two young climate activists, walked into room 43 of the National Gallery in London, opened two tins of Heinz tomato soup and then threw the sloppy orange contents at Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers.”The pair then glued themselves to the wall beneath the painting’s frame, before Plummer shouted, “What is worth more, art or life?”On Friday, a British judge sentenced the pair, both members of the Just Stop Oil protest group, to lengthy prison terms for the protest, which he said was “criminally idiotic” and could have caused “irreversible damage” to the masterpiece.Judge Christopher Hehir, sentenced Plummer, 23, to two years in prison for damaging the painting’s frame. Holland, 22, received 20 months in jail for the same offense. The court had found the pair guilty of the offenses in July.During the sentencing hearing, Judge Hehir said that acidic soup had a “corrosive effect” on the painting’s 17th-century wood frame and had lowered the frame’s value by an estimated 10,000 pounds, or about $13,000. The painting — one of a series that van Gogh made between 1888 and 1889 — is one of the National Gallery’s most treasured paintings and currently a centerpiece of the museum’s 200th anniversary exhibition, “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers.”The judge said the duo’s action came close to damaging the masterpiece — within “the thickness of a pane of glass.” He added that “stupidity like this” could lead museums to withdraw cultural treasures from public view, or force them to introduce onerous security measures that would deter visitors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A New Perspective on Van Gogh’s Final Flowering

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      A major exhibition in London focuses on the painter’s final years, finding new feelings in some of his most famous works.The two vivid portraits — the poet and the lover — hang together in the first room of the exhibition, as they did above van Gogh’s bed in the so-called Yellow House in a working-class neighborhood of Arles, France.It was there, roughly two years before his death by suicide in July 1890, that he dreamed of creating a “Studio of the South” — an artist commune that would produce avant-garde art bathed in the golden light of southern France. (“I know that it will do certain people good to find poetic subjects — THE STARRY SKY — THE VINE BRANCHES — THE FURROWS — the poet’s garden,” he wrote to his brother, Theo.)Van Gogh’s friend, the painter Paul Gauguin, came to stay for two months in late 1888 (ending with the dispute in which the Dutchman famously lopped off part of his own ear), but van Gogh was otherwise alone in Provence. It was a prolific period during which — despite emotional turmoil, mental breakdowns and periodic institutionalization — the artist produced some of his most famous, inventive and moving works.“Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers,” which runs through Jan. 19, 2025, at the National Gallery, in London, brings together over 50 works (some of them rarely on loan) to present a fresh and tender vision of the well-known artist. The show is a centerpiece of the museum’s 200th anniversary celebrations.“Sunflowers,” (1888).The National Gallery, LondonThe exhibition’s focus is on the painter’s two final years, when his distinctive writhing line, hallucinatory palette, impastoed surfaces and romantic visions reached new heights. It also highlights how he displayed his works in the Yellow House, carefully arranging them to create an environment of images in conversation, and his desire to make paintings that transformed what he observed in ordinary life into a kind of poetry.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More