The campaign is sensational. At first, it seems incomprehensible to you that a museum like the Leopold in Vienna could commit the atrocity of hanging one of his paintings completely crooked, visibly crooked, obscenely crooked. one? No! That one is too. And that, and that. You notice that, below, some decreasing letters (at the angle left by the paintings) warn about “a few degrees more”, which seem to be the ones that affect the horizontality of those masterpieces. It’s not a mistake. It is a fantastic campaign, with which the Viennese museum tries to warn of the effects that climate change will have on some of the landscapes represented, so that the purely artistic beauty and meaning of the works is added by the environmental story.
Under Lake Attersee, a wonder by Gustav Klimt from 1900, it is explained that an increase of “only” 2ºC in the average temperature of the planet would alter the oxygen level of the water, lower its level and encourage proliferation of algae, with which the lake would cease to be blue as in the painting and become green.
Under Motive of Venice, which Marie Egner painted around 1890, it is noted how the increase of 4º in temperatures would leave under water the suggestive jetty of the city of canals, which would very possibly become the world capital of tourism submarine, because it would have been mainly under water.
Under the sunset that Egon Schiele painted in 1913 the alert rises to 5º: this increase would devastate Austria, with less fine and melancholy rain and a progressive increase in torrential downpours, which is already happening in many inhabited areas of Europe .
Also 5º of increase in the temperatures of the planet before 2100 would destroy the Coastal Landscape of Normandy painted by Gustave Courbet, who established the origin of the world, but did not guess the climate apocalypse that seems to be on the way to fall on us all. That limestone cliff will succumb to rising sea levels and the violence of the rain, say the forecasts.
Now I should, of course, recommend that you don’t even think of going all the way to the Leopold, unless you’re already in Vienna or traveling there by bicycle.
