The protest group Palestine Action has slashed a painting of Lord Balfour housed at the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College.
A painting of Lord Balfour housed at the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College was slashed by protest group Palestine Action.
The painting of Lord Balfour was made in 1914 by Philip Alexius de László inside Trinity College. The Palestine Action group specifically targeted the Lord Balfour painting, describing his declaration as the beginning of “ethnic cleansing of Palestine by promising the land away—which the British never had the right to do.”
Probably the only type of destruction of art as protest I condone. The piece:
Is not very old or culturally/historically important
Directly depicts someone at the root of this conflict
Was deliberately targeted and the reasons layed out
Trying to destroy unrelated art work is just wasteful of our shared human heritage. Attacking symbols of oppression however is perfectly valid in my opinion and is to me perfectly reasonable escalation when peaceful protests obviously do not bring the changes needed.
I put this on the same level as African Americans attacking statues of confederate generals and other proponents of slavery to hammer home their point.
Agreed, except that I would call this peaceful protest. Vandalism isn't violence. Violence is against a person. As long as no person was relying on this painting for their meals or shelter or whatever - and they definitely weren't - then no person was harmed.
Depends really, it's all deeply contextual. A landlord kicking a family out because they can't make rent is violence. Cops destroying an encampment of the unhoused is violence. Those people are hurt by those actions, even if not immediately.
It's not about reliance exactly, but about harm to people. Any action that can reasonably be assumed to harm a person is violent. Pulling a lever isn't violent, unless it's the trigger of a gun aimed at someone. Then a series of predictable physical processes unfold that lead to serious harm.
Breaking a plank of wood isn't violence, even if it belongs to someone else. That's just property destruction. But if someone was standing on that plank of wood and they fall to their death, you killed them.
Another important detail to consider is that these pieces are really only worthwhile for their historical value. I would argue that this response is more significant than the original production of the painting.
If anything, the value of this painting will increase due to the added historical value of this event.
I just want to point out that most of the other time you hear about "attacks" on art the piece is perfectly fine. They'll attack pieces shielded by glass. It makes a statement and does no damage (maybe a little mess to clean up). Like the recent Mona Lisa "attack" you can't miss that it's covered by glass as you're spending 30m getting closer. It wasn't a mistake that no damage was done.
I do agree in this case it's fairly justified. This man doesn't deserve to be remembered fondly.
If they made a single person google the Balfour Declaration I'm pretty sure they won the exchange. Now you're getting to get a split of people reading just the Declaration, which seems harmless enough, and people reading what it actually did, which was anything but harmless, but you can't control that.