Why Would the Willow Weep
In what appears to be a growing trend, climate activists have attacked another totem of civilization. These vandals make clear that all they ask is the public to take seriously warnings that climate change threatens civilization.
In RealClearPolitics, President Tom Bevan observes:
“Ruining the most beautiful art in the world is probably not going to win people over to your cause.”
According to an AP report:
Two women were detained in Stockholm after they threw “some kind of paint” at a painting by French artist Claude Monet and then glued themselves to the frame, Sweden’s National Museum said Wednesday.
The painting, “The Artist’s Garden at Giverny,” was on display as part of an exhibition at the museum. Spokesperson Hanna Tottmar said artwork was encased in glass and “is now being examined by the museum’s conservators to see if any damage has occurred.”
The exhibit, titled “The Garden,” was closed but expected to reopen to visitors on Thursday. ”We naturally distance ourselves from actions where art or cultural heritage risks being damaged … regardless of the purpose,” Per Hedström, the museum’s acting director, said.
James Freeman wonders in the WSJ, who would listen to speakers who have just self-identified as unreasonable and untethered to any standard of decent behavior?
Wearing neon orange vests, two climate activists splattered mashed potatoes on the protective glass that covers Monet’s Grainstacks at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany. They then glued their hands to the wall below the painting and began to speak.
Fear and Regret vs Hope and Revival
Claude Monet was dedicated to the “creation, cultivation and preservation of beauty,” reported Paul Hayes Tucker (WSJ 2020):
Claude Monet was 73 years old in August 1914 when World War I began. Wealthy and well known throughout much of the Western world, the lauded Impressionist patriarch had been furiously working on a project that he had begun just two months earlier—monumental paintings of his beloved water lily garden that he had dug on his rural property in Giverny to create a personal Eden…
In letters to friends, he often expressed his pain and anxiety about the war, which arose not only from his inability physically to support France’s efforts, but also from the fact that his only surviving child, Michel, had been conscripted and was at the front…
He also was adamant about his commitment to his art. Even when the Germans were within miles of Giverny, causing members of his own family to flee, he defiantly told his dealer Paul Durand-Ruel that he was staying behind because he would rather die among his paintings than abandon them to the enemy.
The “Weeping Willow” paintings, which he began in 1918 when France’s fate appeared to be in the balance, embody this call to duty, especially one of the most emotive examples in the series…
Firmly rooted in the foreground but shrouded in shadow, the willow stretches toward the light like the artist himself, whose lifelong obsession had been the pursuit of the sun’s transformative powers. Here, that quest has become an epic battle appropriate for wartime, when fear and regret were pitted against hope and regeneration.
Novel in Monet’s oeuvre, in fact in the history of art, the painting ultimately is an affirmation of how a highly sensitive individual, at a time of unprecedented challenges, can stand strong and true to himself while providing critical guidance for his fellow countrymen and women.
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