Global warming: paintings in crooked position

Mashed potatoes on a valuable painting in a museum or activist hands glued to picture frames do little to help the climate. The actions of last autumn in Potsdam and Berlin have attracted attention and heated up tempers, but more because of the chosen forms of protest and less because of the threatening climate change. Above all, they seemed unsuitable for achieving a more ambitious climate policy.

But what if Gustav Klimt’s painting “Am Attersee” (1900) suddenly hangs crookedly on the wall in the Vienna Leopold Museum in the exhibition “Vienna around 1900”? You almost want to straighten it out. It’s only two degrees crooked – and so is the explanation. According to the Paris climate agreement, the earth must not warm up more than 1.5 degrees, most scientists agree on that. If the temperature rises by two degrees by 2050, the lack of oxygen would cause the Attersee to tip over.

Klimt’s masterpiece is one of 15 paintings hung at an angle of between two and six degrees as part of the intervention “A Few Degrees More – Few Degrees, Dramatic Effect” to draw visitors’ attention to climate change and its consequences.

You go in search of the next “difficulties” and read with a shudder what climate change would mean for the motif shown. But one is not left alone with the terrifying vision. At the end, “How we can take action” gives practical tips on how each individual can do something to avert the catastrophe.

The idea for this action by the Leopold Museum came about with the creative agency Wien Nord Serviceplan and the climate research network CCCA (Climate Change Center Austria), which provides the scientific basis and offers further information directly via a QR code. Works of art thus become climate ambassadors in the museum, appealing to visitors of all generations. Emotional appeal and curiosity are better than mashed potatoes and glue. Imitation is desirable and feasible if the right partners get together, for example in Potsdam and Berlin.