👀 Not Heinzous; necessary

#118 | No Planet B

Last weekend climate activists threw mashed potatoes at a Monet.

A couple of weeks before that, it was a can of soup at van Gogh’s Sunflowers at London’s National Gallery. My immediate reaction to the tomato activism was, why my poor, sweet Vincent, who only ever harmed himself?

Why not one of the horrible ones – Picasso, Manet or Gauguin. Souping the art of an awful human to make a statement about the evil in our time has a lovely symmetry, no?

And then I realised the point they were making. Vincent van Gogh is one of the great loves of my life. His Sunflowers hang above my desk. I had a visceral reaction to the desecration of a much-loved painting, but what about the everyday defiling of our planet? My reaction kinda proved the climate activists’ point. Is art, no matter how breathtaking, worth more than a future for the human race?

For your weekend watching, here’s Oxford economist Kate Raworth on how we can create regenerative, distributive economies that work within the planet’s ecological limits. A little heavy, I know, but I hope you’ll watch it anyway.

We owe it to our children to be loud about the things that matter. 

Much love,

Karina