No Art on a Dead Planet: Political Iconoclasm as Climate Activism

ABSTRACT A trend has recently emerged among climate activists of attacking artworks as a means of registering protest. I analyse this mode of protest, which I term political iconoclasm, and offer a novel partial defence of political iconoclasm as a protest strategy for environmental activists. I focus on Just Stop Oil's attack on van Gogh's Sunflowers . I argue that climate activists' art‐attacking protests differ significantly from other recent art‐attacking protests: climate protestors generally target non‐commemorative, morally innocent artworks, and usually do not seek to destroy the artworks they attack. I argue that iconoclastic protests have been unusually good at capturing attention. Moreover, iconoclasm can enable protestors to communicate with their audience in an unusually direct and compelling way. I address some worries about political iconoclasm, and evaluate it against two theories of permissible protest: one on which disobedience must be civil, and another on which disobedience must meet standards of proportionality and necessity, adapted from the ethics of self‐defence and war. I argue that iconoclasm may be permissible on either theory. Iconoclasm is most likely to be permissible when used sparingly, when the artwork attacked has relevant representational content, and when the iconoclastic act transforms the artwork into a protest symbol.