The Louvre: Mona Lisa smeared with cake

Cake-throwing to raise environmental awareness? A 36-year-old man disguised as an old lady in a wheelchair threw a piece of cake at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre in Paris on Sunday, in a gesture apparently intended to make museum visitors pay more attention to the planet. The famous painting, which is protected by bulletproof glass, was undamaged. Is the Mona Lisa a climate polluter?

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Kurier (AT) /

A gentle smile for her assailant

Kurier sees no need for a fuss:

“Mona Lisa wasn't wearing a protective mask but a protective glass shield. Her face and décolleté thus remained unblemished. The most famous woman in the Louvre registered the attack with a gentle smile. She needn't worry, safe behind her protective glass, which had already successfully repelled a flying teacup in 2009.”

Aargauer Zeitung (CH) /

Maximum attention sought

The Aargauer Zeitung stresses the Mona Lisa's innocence:

“Protected behind bulletproof glass, she will hardly have gotten a taste of the dessert. But the aftertaste is nonetheless bitter. The cake thrower, who was calmly escorted outside, urged: 'Think of the Earth!' ... With cake in her face, the Mona Lisa now stands accused of being a climate criminal. ... The Mona Lisa herself, however, naturally bears no guilt. That must also be clear to the cake thrower. He merely took advantage of the attention, the surveillance cameras and the mobile phone cameras of hundreds of tourists to recite his little sentence as media-effectively as possible.”

Contrepoints (FR) /

A cry for help from a manipulated generation

Such acts are the result of many detrimental influences, writes Damien Conzelmann, a student of law and economics, in Contrepoints:

“While they - rightly - provoke mockery and ridicule, they are above all the desperate cry of a generation that is distraught and panicked, manipulated by media seeking clicks, politicians seeking power and organisations seeking funding. Eco-anxiety is a direct result of the omnipresent eco-anxious discourse. The fight against the proponents of environmental planning and for the promotion of liberal ideas requires first and foremost finally offering the new generation desirable perspectives for the future.”