Activist arrested for attack on Monet painting in Paris

PARIS: French police arrested a climate activist on Saturday after attacking a priceless painting by Claude Monet at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris in protest, prosecutors said.

The woman stuck a red cloth to the impressionist work “Coquelicots” (Poppy Field) and then taped her hands to the wall before she was arrested, police said.

A restoration expert examined the painting, which is hidden behind glass, and found no lasting damage, a Musée d’Orsay spokesman told AFP. “The exhibition is now fully open to the public again.”

However, the spokesman said that criminal charges would be filed over the latest in a growing number of attacks on cultural groups.

The woman, a member of the environmental group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Reaction), was taken into custody for intentional damage to property, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

In a video posted on X (the former Twitter), the woman can be seen placing the red cloth over the Monet painting of a field of red poppies.

In the video, she warns of the “nightmarish” effects of global warming.

Completed in 1873, Monet’s painting shows people with umbrellas walking through a field of blooming poppies and is part of a special exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay entitled “Paris 1874, the Invention of Impressionism,” which includes 130 works by 31 artists.

“We love art”

Some of Monet’s works have sold for tens of millions of dollars; his painting “Meules” (“Haystacks”) fetched more than $110 million at auction in 2019.

Riposte Alimentaire has claimed responsibility for several art attacks in France to raise awareness of the climate crisis and deteriorating food quality.

In January, two protesters from the group threw soup at the painting “Mona Lisa” in the Louvre. Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece is hidden behind bulletproof glass.

The attackers were sentenced by a Paris court to do volunteer work for a charity.

In 2022, a man threw a custard pie at the Mona Lisa because he felt artists were not focusing enough on “the planet.”

In February, Riposte Alimentaire threw soup at another Monet painting, “Spring,” in Lyon, southeastern France.

Last month, the group’s activists posted leaflets around “Liberty Leading the People,” a painting by Eugène Delacroix in the Louvre.

In April, two members were arrested at the Musée d’Orsay, a museum of 19th-century art, on suspicion of planning an action there.

Riposte Alimentaire describes itself as a “French civil resistance movement that wants to initiate radical social change for the environment and society”.

“We love art,” the movement’s statement says, “but on a burning planet, the artists of the future will have nothing left to paint.”

Monet also seems to be a popular target of climate activists elsewhere: paintings by the impressionist have already been the target of attacks in Potsdam and Stockholm.