As I was working on my supplemental material for the first Discovery Paper, I kept coming across this image, "Liberty Leading the People" Painted by Eugene Delacroix (Louvre, 1830). It seems to be the image that people resonate with revolution or at least liberty. It was the one of the first images that comes up on Google when you search revolution and one of the chosen images on the Wikipedia page. Now this may not seem like reliable sources, but Google and Wikipedia typically indicate something: what the majority of the population or at least a large portion of it think of when they think revolution. It is not like the title of this image even has revolution in it, so there must be something that associates it with the image of revolutions?
Whats the strange part as that even before I started to look for images of revolution, this was the image that popped into my head as the image of revolution and my definition of revolution is broader than what that image portrays. I think of technological revolutions and even the civil rights movement before I move on to thinking about the French Revolution. So what is it about this image that makes it the epitome of what a revolution is?
Is it the idea that revolution is about liberty or freedom as the title of the painting suggests? or is it more accurately that some textbook writer decided to place this image with their definition of revolution in a history textbook and that's now what people associate revolution with? or finally is Arendt correct in saying that all revolution essentially began, or at least the modern revolutions, with the French Revolution which is what this painting is supposed to portray?
The funny thing about revolution is that it takes on so many different personas and I don't think revolution can be accurately describe by this image. So why has it become the face of revolutions as we know it today? But I am sure people are now wondering, what image I would pick instead of this image to represent revolutions?
Would it be one of the civil rights movement? (March on Washington, 1963, US Information Agency)
Would it be an image of the technological revolution, because they enable the revolutions of human rights to occur?
This is confusing because not one of these images accurately portrays what a revolution is? Is the idea of revolution too big to be encompassed by an image? or should each person pick their own image to describe what a revolution is? or finally, should we just accept that Eugene Delacroix painting should be the image to represent revolution?
The Delacroix is I think a favorite visual for the French Revolution because it is an absolutely stunning painting, involving complicated and dramatic figure poses, landscape, action, gore, boobs, the revolution literally walking over the dead bodies, and an enormous French flag waving right through the middle.
ReplyDeleteThe French Revolution is taken as the start of modern revolutions because it was the first time a people's movement successfully rejected serfdom and insisted on some kind of democracy. In Europe, anyway.