Seen: Jerry Saltz

Mind the Art Climate activists have been celebrated for defacing great paintings. Why?

On October 14, climate activists Phoebe Plummer, 21, and Anna Holland, 20, shocked the world by splashing tomato soup over van Gogh's Sunflowers in London's National Gallery. Wearing JUST STOP OIL T-shirts, they then glued themselves to the picture. One asked, "What is worth more, art or life?"

Plummer later explained that they were motivated by a "sense of fear" brought on by global warming. They despaired that humanity was not doing enough to preempt its worst effects and decided to try "a media-grabbing action to get people talking." Talk they did. Activists around the world have recently engaged in similar actions, tossing mashed potatoes and other substances at, or gluing themselves to, works by Vermeer, Klimt, Botticelli, da Vinci, Monet, Goya, Constable, Warhol, and Charles Ray.

Theirs is a form of performance art, but its message is muddled and unconvincing.

The answer to their question-art or life? is clear: life, of course. But the activists have nevertheless left behind questions that remain unexamined, including why art, of all things, has been pitted against life in the debate over the Earth's inhabitability. Why these specific works of art? Why did the acts against them provoke such a visceral reaction on the part of those who opposed and supported the stunts alike? And what happens to activism when it resembles a performance when it looks something like art itself?