PARIS: A climate activist was arrested on Saturday (Jun 1) for sticking an adhesive poster on a Monet painting at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris to draw attention to global warming, a police source told AFP.
The woman was seen in a video posted on X, placing a blood-red poster over the Coquelicots painting by Claude Monet, a French Impressionist painter.
Of the poster covering Monet’s art, she added that “this nightmarish image awaits us if no alternative is put in place”.
The woman is said to be a member of Riposte Alimentaire or Food Response in French, a group of environmental activists and defenders of sustainable food production.
Monet’s painting, completed in 1873, shows people with umbrellas strolling in a blooming poppy field.
It was not protected by glass. The Musee d’Orsay did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment on the condition of the painting after the attack.
Riposte Alimentaire has claimed responsibility for several attacks on art in a bid to draw attention to the climate crisis.
They include soup attacks on the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, and on another Monet painting, Springtime, in the Lyon Fine Arts Museum in February.
In April, two of its members were arrested at the Musee d’Orsay on suspicion of preparing an action there.
Last month, activists belonging to the group also stuck flyers around Liberty Leading the People, a painting by French artist Eugene Delacroix in the Louvre.