[NEW ISSUE] ‘The Left vs. Art’

Why climate activists attack our cultural heritage.

NATIONAL REVIEW MARCH 2025 NATIONAL REVIEW   |   MAR. 2024 (ILLUSTRATION / NATIONAL REVIEW) "La Venus del Espejo (Venus at the mirror), painted in the mid-1600s by Diego Velázquez, spent much of the first few centuries of its existence at a relative remove from the public eye," writes Fred Bauer in the new cover story of National Review magazine, "Vandals of Civilization: Why Climate Activists Attack Our Cultural Heritage."    The nude Venus reclines with her back to the viewer as she looks at herself in a mirror held by Cupid. Her soft skin glows, and Velázquez cleverly uses the mirror to show her contemplative face. This is beauty reflecting on beauty. For a long time, the painting circulated among the houses of Spanish courtiers. In the early 1800s, it was brought to the country house Rokeby Park in northern England, from which the painting derives its popular title, the Rokeby Venus. It went on public display after being acquired by London's National Gallery in 1906 and remains part of the museum's collection.   Then, Bauer writes, "in November 2023, thunder filled the gallery as two Just Stop Oil activists smashed the protective glass of the Rokeby Venus with hammers."   As Bauer relates in his magnificent essay, a "blitzkrieg of these art attacks" has wracked major museums in recent years. "Just Stop Oil activists," he writes, "threw tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers in London's National Gallery, and one activist at the Mauritshuis in The Hague tried to glue his head to Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring while a compatriot doused him with tomato soup. Letzte Generation protesters tossed mashed potatoes at Claude Monet's Haystacks in Potsdam, and a pair of Ultima Generazione compatriots glued themselves to Botticelli's Primavera in Florence."   The attacks are more than just destructive. They're nihilistic. In their urge to save the future, the attackers have become anti-civilizational forces. The climate activists believe that government has failed them, that politics and society have failed them — and that, fundamentally, you and I have failed them.   "Women did not get the vote by voting. It is time for deeds and not words," declared one of the activists who attacked La Venus del Espejo. Another proclaimed that "if we love history, if we love art, and if we love our families, we must just stop oil."   Fred Bauer's essay in the March 2025 issue of National Review magazine is a striking portrait of what can happen when politics becomes all encompassing and totalizing: It leads to the destruction of beauty, which after all is part of what makes us human.   Read the whole thing here.   In this issue, you'll find the kinds of essays on culture, politics, and the human condition that have made NR — for seven decades — the best magazine written in English. These include: Will Swaim on the "Wildfire of the Vanities" and California's failed political model Abigail Anthony on what she saw at the virtual Trans Academy, where if you were "born in the wrong body" you can try out a new one Andrew Stuttaford on "Keir Starmer's Labour Dystopia" in the United Kingdom Allen Guelzo, America's premier historian of the Civil War era, on Stephen Budiansky's new book on the war's most catastrophically bloody day, "The Shock of Antietam" And, as always, you'll find Ross Douthat's film review (on Nosferatu) and Martha Bayles streaming & TV review (on Slow Horses) as well as NR's famous The Week. Right now you can try NRPlus (which grants you access to the normally paywalled magazine) for just $1 per week.   Or, if you'd like to receive the print magazine in the mail, I suggest you try out the print-and-digital bundle for just $65 (that's 50 percent off the cover price). I tell people all the time: The bundle is the absolute best way to support NR's conservative journalism. This year will bring its share of craziness and lunacy (as Fred Bauer's cover story aptly describes). But NR will always be there: standing for civilization. Please join us! Very sincerely yours, Mark Antonio Wright Executive Editor National Review TABLE OF CONTENTS ADVERTISEMENT 19 West 44th Street, Ste. 1701, New York, NY, 10036 19 West 44th Street, Ste. 1701 New York, NY, 10036 Your Preferences | Unsubscribe | Privacy View this e-mail in your browser.