Eugene Delacroix. Freedom leading the people to the barricades

The painting by Jacques Louis David "The Oath of the Horatii" is a turning point in the history of European painting. Stylistically, it still belongs to classicism; it is a style oriented towards Antiquity, and at first glance this orientation is retained by David. The Oath of the Horatii is based on the story of how the Roman patriots, the three brothers Horace, were chosen to fight against the representatives of the hostile city of Alba Longa, the brothers Curiatii. Titus Livius and Diodorus Siculus have this story; Pierre Corneille wrote a tragedy on its plot.

“But it is precisely the oath of the Horatii that is missing from these classical texts.<...>It is David who turns the oath into the central episode of the tragedy. The old man is holding three swords. He stands in the center, he represents the axis of the picture. To his left are three sons merging into one figure, to his right are three women. This picture is amazingly simple. Before David, classicism, for all its orientation towards Raphael and Greece, could not find such a harsh, simple masculine language for expressing civic values. David seemed to hear what Diderot was saying, who did not have time to see this canvas: “You must write as they said in Sparta.”

Ilya Doronchenkov

In the time of David, Antiquity first became tangible through the archaeological discovery of Pompeii. Before him, Antiquity was the sum of the texts of ancient authors - Homer, Virgil and others - and a few dozen or hundreds of imperfectly preserved sculptures. Now it has become tangible, down to furniture and beads.

“But none of this is in the picture of David. In it, Antiquity is strikingly reduced not so much to the surroundings (helmets, irregular swords, togas, columns), but to the spirit of primitive furious simplicity.

Ilya Doronchenkov

David carefully staged the appearance of his masterpiece. He painted and exhibited it in Rome, garnering enthusiastic criticism there, and then sent a letter to a French patron. In it, the artist reported that at some point he stopped painting for the king and began to paint it for himself, and, in particular, decided to make it not square, as required for the Paris Salon, but rectangular. As the artist expected, the rumors and the letter fueled public excitement, the painting was booked into an advantageous place at the already opened Salon.

“And so, belatedly, the picture is put into place and stands out as the only one. If it were square, it would be hung in a row of others. And by changing the size, David turned it into a unique one. It was a very powerful artistic gesture. On the one hand, he declared himself as the main one in creating the canvas. On the other hand, he riveted everyone's attention to this picture.

Ilya Doronchenkov

The picture has another important meaning, which makes it a masterpiece for all time:

“This canvas does not appeal to the individual - it refers to the person standing in the ranks. This is a team. And this is a command to a person who first acts and then thinks. David very correctly showed two non-intersecting, absolutely tragically separated worlds - the world of acting men and the world of suffering women. And this juxtaposition - very energetic and beautiful - shows the horror that actually stands behind the story of the Horatii and behind this picture. And since this horror is universal, then the "Oath of the Horatii" will not leave us anywhere.

Ilya Doronchenkov 

Abstract

In 1816, the French frigate Medusa was wrecked off the coast of Senegal. 140 passengers left the brig on a raft, but only 15 escaped; they had to resort to cannibalism in order to survive the 12-day wandering on the waves. A scandal erupted in French society; the incompetent captain, a royalist by conviction, was found guilty of the disaster.

“For liberal French society, the catastrophe of the frigate Medusa, the sinking of the ship, which for a Christian person symbolizes the community (first the church, and now the nation), has become a symbol, a very bad sign of the beginning of a new Restoration regime.”

Ilya Doronchenkov

In 1818, the young artist Théodore Géricault, looking for a worthy subject, read the book of the survivors and set to work on his painting. In 1819, the painting was exhibited at the Paris Salon and became a hit, a symbol of romanticism in painting. Géricault quickly abandoned his intention to portray the most seductive scene of cannibalism; he did not show stabbing, despair, or the very moment of salvation.

“Gradually, he chose the only right moment. This is the moment of maximum hope and maximum uncertainty. This is the moment when the people who survived on the raft first see the Argus brig on the horizon, which first passed the raft (he did not notice it).
And only then, going on a collision course, stumbled upon him. On the sketch, where the idea has already been found, “Argus” is noticeable, and in the picture it turns into a small dot on the horizon, disappearing, which attracts the eye, but, as it were, does not exist.”

Ilya Doronchenkov

Gericault renounces naturalism: instead of emaciated bodies, he has beautiful courageous athletes in his picture. But this is not idealization, it is universalization: the picture is not about specific Meduza passengers, it is about everyone.

“Géricault scatters the dead in the foreground. He did not invent it: the French youth raved about the dead and wounded bodies. It excited, hit on the nerves, destroyed conventions: a classicist cannot show the ugly and terrible, but we will. But these corpses have another meaning. Look at what is happening in the middle of the picture: there is a storm, there is a funnel into which the eye is drawn. And over the bodies, the viewer, standing right in front of the picture, steps onto this raft. We are all there."

Ilya Doronchenkov

Géricault's painting works in a new way: it is addressed not to an army of spectators, but to every person, everyone is invited to the raft. And the ocean is not just an ocean of lost hopes in 1816. This is the destiny of man.

Abstract

By 1814, France was tired of Napoleon, and the arrival of the Bourbons was received with relief. However, many political freedoms were abolished, the Restoration began, and by the end of the 1820s, the younger generation began to realize the ontological mediocrity of power.

“Eugène Delacroix belonged to that stratum of the French elite that rose under Napoleon and was pushed aside by the Bourbons. Nevertheless, he was favored: he received a gold medal for his first painting at the Salon, Dante's Boat, in 1822. And in 1824, he made the painting "Massacre on Chios", depicting ethnic cleansing, when the Greek population of the island of Chios was deported and destroyed during the Greek War of Independence. This is the first sign of political liberalism in painting, which touched still very distant countries.

Ilya Doronchenkov

In July 1830, Charles X passed several laws severely restricting political freedoms and sent troops to sack the printing press of an opposition newspaper. But the Parisians responded by shooting, the city was covered with barricades, and during the "Three Glorious Days" the Bourbon regime fell.

The famous painting by Delacroix, dedicated to the revolutionary events of 1830, shows different social strata: a dandy in a top hat, a tramp boy, a worker in a shirt. But the main one, of course, is a beautiful young woman with bare breasts and a shoulder.

“Delacroix succeeds here with something that almost never happens with artists of the 19th century, who are thinking more and more realistically. He manages in one picture - very pathetic, very romantic, very sonorous - to combine reality, physically tangible and brutal (look at the corpses in the foreground loved by romantics) and symbols. Because this full-blooded woman is, of course, Freedom itself. Political development since the 18th century has made it necessary for artists to visualize what cannot be seen. How can you see freedom? Christian values ​​are conveyed to a person through something very human - through the life of Christ and his suffering. And such political abstractions as freedom, equality, fraternity have no shape. And now Delacroix, perhaps the first and, as it were, not the only one who, in general, successfully coped with this task: we now know what freedom looks like.

Ilya Doronchenkov

One of the political symbols in the painting is the Phrygian cap on the girl's head, a permanent heraldic symbol of democracy. Another talking motif is nakedness.

“Nudity has long been associated with naturalness and nature, and in the 18th century this association was forced. The history of the French Revolution even knows a unique performance, when a naked French theater actress portrayed nature in Notre Dame Cathedral. And nature is freedom, it is naturalness. And that's what, it turns out, this tangible, sensual, attractive woman means. It signifies natural liberty."

Ilya Doronchenkov

Although this painting made Delacroix famous, it was soon removed from view for a long time, and it is clear why. The spectator standing in front of her finds herself in the position of those who are attacked by Freedom, who are attacked by the revolution. It is very uncomfortable to look at the unstoppable movement that will crush you.

Abstract

On May 2, 1808, an anti-Napoleonic rebellion broke out in Madrid, the city was in the hands of the protesters, but by the evening of the 3rd, mass executions of rebels were taking place in the vicinity of the Spanish capital. These events soon led to a guerrilla war that lasted six years. When it is over, two paintings will be commissioned from the painter Francisco Goya to commemorate the uprising. The first is "The uprising of May 2, 1808 in Madrid."

“Goya really depicts the moment the attack began - that first Navajo strike that started the war. It is this compactness of the moment that is extremely important here. He seems to bring the camera closer, from the panorama he moves to an exceptionally close plan, which also did not exist to such an extent before him. There is another exciting thing: the feeling of chaos and stabbing is extremely important here. There is no one here that you feel sorry for. There are victims and there are killers. And these murderers with bloodshot eyes, Spanish patriots, in general, are engaged in butchering.

Ilya Doronchenkov

In the second picture, the characters change places: those who are cut in the first picture, in the second picture, those who cut them are shot. And the moral ambivalence of the street fight is replaced by moral clarity: Goya is on the side of those who rebelled and die.

“The enemies are now divorced. On the right are those who will live. It's a series of people in uniform with guns, exactly the same, even more the same than David's Horace brothers. Their faces are invisible, and their shakos make them look like machines, like robots. These are not human figures. They stand out in a black silhouette in the darkness of the night against the backdrop of a lantern flooding a small clearing.

On the left are those who die. They move, swirl, gesticulate, and for some reason it seems that they are taller than their executioners. Although the main, central character - a Madrid man in orange pants and a white shirt - is on his knees. He is still taller, he is a little on a hillock.

Ilya Doronchenkov

The dying rebel stands in the pose of Christ, and for greater persuasiveness, Goya depicts stigmata on his palms. In addition, the artist makes you go through a difficult experience all the time - look at the last moment before the execution. Finally, Goya changes the understanding of the historical event. Before him, an event was portrayed by its ritual, rhetorical side; in Goya, an event is an instant, a passion, a non-literary cry.

In the first picture of the diptych, it can be seen that the Spaniards are not slaughtering the French: the riders falling under the horse's feet are dressed in Muslim costumes.
The fact is that in the troops of Napoleon there was a detachment of Mamelukes, Egyptian cavalrymen.

“It would seem strange that the artist turns Muslim fighters into a symbol of the French occupation. But this allows Goya to turn a contemporary event into a link in the history of Spain. For any nation that forged its self-consciousness during the Napoleonic Wars, it was extremely important to realize that this war is part of an eternal war for its values. And such a mythological war for the Spanish people was the Reconquista, the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslim kingdoms. Thus, Goya, while remaining faithful to the documentary, modernity, puts this event in connection with the national myth, forcing us to realize the struggle of 1808 as the eternal struggle of the Spaniards for the national and Christian.

Ilya Doronchenkov

The artist managed to create an iconographic formula of execution. Every time his colleagues - be it Manet, Dix or Picasso - turned to the topic of execution, they followed Goya.

Abstract

The pictorial revolution of the 19th century, even more tangibly than in the event picture, took place in the landscape.

“The landscape completely changes the optics. Man changes his scale, man experiences himself in a different way in the world. A landscape is a realistic depiction of what is around us, with a sense of moisture-laden air and everyday details in which we are immersed. Or it can be a projection of our experiences, and then in the play of a sunset or in a joyful sunny day we see the state of our soul. But there are striking landscapes that belong to both modes. And it's very hard to know, really, which one is dominant."

Ilya Doronchenkov

This duality is clearly manifested by the German artist Caspar David Friedrich: his landscapes both tell us about the nature of the Baltic, and at the same time represent a philosophical statement. There is a lingering sense of melancholy in Friedrich's landscapes; a person rarely penetrates them beyond the background and usually turns his back to the viewer.

In his last painting, Ages of Life, a family is depicted in the foreground: children, parents, an old man. And further, behind the spatial gap - the sunset sky, the sea and sailboats.

“If we look at how this canvas is built, we will see a striking echo between the rhythm of human figures in the foreground and the rhythm of sailboats in the sea. Here are tall figures, here are low figures, here are big sailboats, here are boats under sail. Nature and sailboats - this is what is called the music of the spheres, it is eternal and does not depend on man. The man in the foreground is his finite being. The sea in Friedrich is very often a metaphor for otherness, death. But death for him, a believer, is a promise of eternal life, about which we do not know. These people in the foreground - small, clumsy, not very attractively written - follow the rhythm of a sailboat with their rhythm, as a pianist repeats the music of the spheres. This is our human music, but it all rhymes with the very music that for Friedrich fills nature. Therefore, it seems to me that in this canvas Friedrich promises - not an afterlife paradise, but that our finite being is still in harmony with the universe.

Ilya Doronchenkov 

Abstract

After the French Revolution, people realized that they had a past. The 19th century, through the efforts of romantic aesthetes and positivist historians, created the modern idea of ​​history.

“The 19th century created history painting as we know it. Non-distracted Greek and Roman heroes, acting in an ideal environment, guided by ideal motives. The history of the 19th century becomes theatrical and melodramatic, it approaches man, and we are now able to empathize not with great deeds, but with misfortunes and tragedies. Each European nation created its own history in the 19th century, and constructing history, it, in general, created its own portrait and plans for the future. In this sense, European historical painting of the 19th century is terribly interesting to study, although, in my opinion, it did not leave, almost did not leave truly great works. And among these great works, I see one exception, which we Russians can rightfully be proud of. This is Vasily Surikov's "Morning of the Streltsy Execution".

Ilya Doronchenkov

19th-century history painting, oriented towards external plausibility, usually tells of a single hero who directs history or fails. Surikov's painting here is a striking exception. Her hero is a crowd in colorful outfits, which takes up almost four-fifths of the picture; because of this, it seems that the picture is strikingly disorganized. Behind the live swirling crowd, part of which will soon die, stands the colorful, agitated St. Basil's Cathedral. Behind the frozen Peter, a line of soldiers, a line of gallows - a line of battlements of the Kremlin wall. The picture is held together by the duel of the views of Peter and the red-bearded archer.

“A lot can be said about the conflict between society and the state, the people and the empire. But it seems to me that this thing has some more meanings that make it unique. Vladimir Stasov, a propagandist of the work of the Wanderers and a defender of Russian realism, who wrote a lot of superfluous things about them, spoke very well about Surikov. He called paintings of this kind "choral". Indeed, they lack one hero - they lack one engine. The people are the driving force. But in this picture the role of the people is very clearly visible. Joseph Brodsky in his Nobel lecture perfectly said that the real tragedy is not when the hero dies, but when the choir dies.

Ilya Doronchenkov

Events take place in Surikov's paintings as if against the will of their characters - and in this the concept of the artist's history is obviously close to Tolstoy's.

“Society, people, nation in this picture seem to be divided. Soldiers of Peter in a uniform that seems black, and archers in white are contrasted as good and evil. What connects these two unequal parts of the composition? This is an archer in a white shirt, going to execution, and a soldier in uniform, who supports him by the shoulder. If we mentally remove everything that surrounds them, we will never be able to assume that this person is being led to execution. They are two buddies who are returning home, and one supports the other in a friendly and warm manner. When Petrusha Grinev was hanged by the Pugachevites in The Captain's Daughter, they said: “Don't knock, don't knock,” as if they really wanted to cheer him up. This feeling that a people divided by the will of history is at the same time fraternal and united is the amazing quality of Surikov’s canvas, which I also don’t know anywhere else.”

Ilya Doronchenkov 

Abstract

In painting, size matters, but not every subject can be depicted on a large canvas. Different pictorial traditions depicted the villagers, but most often not in huge paintings, but this is precisely the “Funeral at Ornans” by Gustave Courbet. Ornan is a prosperous provincial town, where the artist himself comes from.

“Courbet moved to Paris but did not become part of the artistic establishment. He did not receive an academic education, but he had a powerful hand, a very tenacious eye and great ambition. He always felt like a provincial, and he was best at home, in Ornan. But he lived almost all his life in Paris, fighting with the art that was already dying, fighting with the art that idealizes and talks about the general, about the past, about the beautiful, not noticing the present. Such art, which rather praises, which rather delights, as a rule, finds a very large demand. Courbet was, indeed, a revolutionary in painting, although now this revolutionary nature of him is not very clear to us, because he writes life, he writes prose. The main thing that was revolutionary in him was that he stopped idealizing his nature and began to write it exactly as he sees, or as he believed that he sees.

Ilya Doronchenkov

About fifty people are depicted in a giant picture almost in full growth. All of them are real persons, and experts have identified almost all the participants in the funeral. Courbet painted his countrymen, and they were pleased to get into the picture exactly as they are.

“But when this painting was exhibited in 1851 in Paris, it created a scandal. She went against everything that the Parisian public was used to at that moment. She offended the artists with the lack of a clear composition and rough, dense impasto painting, which conveys the materiality of things, but does not want to be beautiful. She frightened off the ordinary person by the fact that he could not really understand who it was. Striking was the disintegration of communications between the audience of provincial France and the Parisians. The Parisians took the image of this respectable wealthy crowd as the image of the poor. One of the critics said: “Yes, this is a disgrace, but this is the disgrace of the province, and Paris has its own disgrace.” Under the ugliness, in fact, was understood the ultimate truthfulness.

Ilya Doronchenkov

Courbet refused to idealize, which made him a true avant-garde artist of the 19th century. He focuses on French popular prints, and on a Dutch group portrait, and on antique solemnity. Courbet teaches us to perceive modernity in its originality, in its tragedy and in its beauty.

“French salons knew images of hard peasant labor, poor peasants. But the image mode was generally accepted. The peasants needed to be pitied, the peasants needed to be sympathized with. It was a view from above. A person who sympathizes is, by definition, in a priority position. And Courbet deprived his spectator of the possibility of such patronizing empathy. His characters are majestic, monumental, they ignore their viewers, and they do not allow you to establish such a contact with them that makes them part of the familiar world, they break stereotypes very powerfully.

Ilya Doronchenkov 

Abstract

The 19th century did not like itself, preferring to look for beauty in something else, be it Antiquity, the Middle Ages or the East. Charles Baudelaire was the first to learn to see the beauty of modernity, and it was embodied in painting by artists whom Baudelaire was not destined to see: for example, Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet.

“Manet is a provocateur. Manet is at the same time a brilliant painter, whose charm of colors, colors that are very paradoxically combined, makes the viewer not ask himself obvious questions. If we look closely at his paintings, we will often be forced to admit that we do not understand what brought these people here, what they are doing next to each other, why these objects are connected on the table. The simplest answer is: Manet is primarily a painter, Manet is primarily an eye. He is interested in the combination of colors and textures, and the logical conjugation of objects and people is the tenth thing. Such pictures often confuse the viewer who is looking for content, who is looking for stories. Mane does not tell stories. He could have remained such an amazingly accurate and refined optical apparatus if he had not created his latest masterpiece already in those years when he was possessed by a fatal disease.

Ilya Doronchenkov

The painting "The Bar at the Folies Bergère" was exhibited in 1882, at first earned ridicule from critics, and then was quickly recognized as a masterpiece. Its theme is the cafe-concert, a striking phenomenon of Parisian life in the second half of the century. It seems that Manet vividly and reliably captured the life of the Folies Bergère.

“But when we begin to look closely at what Manet did in his picture, we will understand that there are a huge number of inconsistencies that are subconsciously disturbing and, in general, do not receive a clear resolution. The girl that we see is a saleswoman, she must, with her physical attractiveness, make visitors stop, flirt with her and order more drinks. Meanwhile, she does not flirt with us, but looks through us. There are four bottles of champagne on the table, warm, but why not on ice? In mirror image, these bottles are not on the same edge of the table as they are in the foreground. The glass with roses is seen from a different angle than all the other objects on the table are seen. And the girl in the mirror does not look exactly like the girl who looks at us: she is stouter, she has more rounded shapes, she leaned towards the visitor. In general, she behaves as the one we are looking at should behave.

Ilya Doronchenkov

Feminist criticism drew attention to the fact that the girl with her outlines resembles a bottle of champagne standing on the counter. This is a well-aimed observation, but hardly exhaustive: the melancholy of the picture, the psychological isolation of the heroine oppose a straightforward interpretation.

“These optical plot and psychological riddles of the picture, which seem to have no definite answer, make us approach it again and again each time and ask these questions, subconsciously saturated with that feeling of beautiful, sad, tragic, everyday modern life, which Baudelaire dreamed of and which forever left Manet before us."

Ilya Doronchenkov 

Recently I came across a painting by Eugene Delacroix "Liberty Leading the People" or "Liberty at the Barricades". The picture was painted based on the popular revolt of 1830 against the last of the Bourbon dynasty, Charles X. But this picture is attributed to the symbol and image of the Great French Revolution.

And let's consider this "symbol" of the Great French Revolution in detail, taking into account the facts about this Revolution.

So from right to left: 1) - fair-haired European with noble features.

2) with protruding ears, very similar to a gypsy, with two pistols screams and runs forward. Well, teenagers always want to assert themselves in something. Even in the game, even in a fight, even in a riot. But he is wearing a white officer's ribbon with a leather bag and a coat of arms. So maybe it's a personal trophy. So this teenage boy has already killed.

3) and With surprisingly CALM FACE, with a French flag in his hand and a Phrygian cap on his head (like - I'm French) and bare chest. Here one involuntarily recalls the participation of Parisian women (possibly prostitutes) in the taking of the Bastille. Excited by permissiveness and the fall of law and order (that is, intoxicated with the air of freedom), the women in the crowd of rebels entered into a skirmish with the soldiers on the walls of the Bastille fortress. They began to expose their intimate places and offer themselves to the soldiers - "Why shoot at us? Better drop your weapons, come down to us and "love" us! We give you our love in exchange for your going over to the side of the insurgent people!" The soldiers chose free "love" and the Bastille fell. About the fact that the naked asses and pussy with boobs of the Parisians took the Bastille, and not the storming revolutionary crowd, they are now silent about this, so as not to spoil the mythologized "picture" of the "revolution". (I almost said - "Revolution of Dignity", because I remembered the Kyiv maydauns with the flags of the outskirts.). It turns out that "Liberty leading the people" is a cold-blooded Semitic woman of easy temper (bare chest) disguised as a Frenchwoman.

4) looking at the bare chest of "Freedom". The chest is beautiful, and it is possible that this is the last thing he sees beautiful in his life.

5), - took off the jacket, boots and pants. "Freedom" sees its causal place, but it is hidden from us by the foot of the murdered. Riots, oh, revolutions, they are always not without robbery and stripping.

6). The face is slightly drawn. The hair is black and curly, the eyes are slightly protruding, the wings of the nose are raised. (Whoever knows, he understood.) As soon as his cylinder on his head did not fall off in the dynamics of the battle and even sits so perfectly on his head? In general, this young "Frenchman" dreams of redistributing public wealth in his favor. Or for your family. Probably does not want to stand in the shop, but wants to be like Rothschild.

7) Behind the right shoulder of a bourgeois in a top hat, is - with a saber in his hand and a pistol behind his belt, and a white wide ribbon over his shoulder (it seems that it was taken from a murdered officer), the face is clearly a southerner.

Now the question is- where are the French, who are, as it were, Europeans(Caucasoids) and who somehow did the Great French Revolution ??? Or even then, 220 years ago, the French were all without exception dark "southerners"? This is despite the fact that Paris is not in the South, but in the North of France. Or is it not French? Or are they those who are called "eternal revolutionaries" in any country???

Which of us in childhood did not look with reverence at "Freedom on the Barricades" by the artist Delacroix, which was a must-have in any Soviet textbook? A more accurate title for the painting, “Liberty Leading the People” (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple), was created by the Frenchman Eugène Delacroix based on the July Revolution of 1830, which put an end to the Restoration regime of the Bourbon monarchy. After numerous preparatory sketches, it took him only three months to complete the painting. In a letter to his brother on October 12, 1830, Delacroix writes: "If I did not fight for the Motherland, then at least I will write for her."

For the first time, "Liberty Leading the People" was exhibited at the Paris Salon in May 1831, where the painting was enthusiastically received and immediately bought by the state. Heinrich Heine, in particular, spoke about his impressions of the salon and of Delacroix's painting.

As we were taught - "due to the revolutionary plot, the canvas was not exhibited in public for the next quarter of a century."

In the center of the picture is a woman symbolizing freedom. On her head is a Phrygian cap, in her right hand is the flag of Republican France, in her left hand is a gun. The bare chest symbolizes the dedication of the French of that time, who with "bare chest" went to the enemy. Some art historians and critics suggest that the artist depicted himself in the form of a man in a top hat to the left of the main character...

Like any Master with a capital letter, Delacroix reflected not only his love for Freedom, but also the dialectics of this concept (although, perhaps, he did not want to). Delacroix's painting is not just an agitation for democratic forces. With all the power of artistic reflection, she poses the main question for our days:

- So what is Freedom - a sacrament or an orgy?!

The insidiousness of the concept of "Freedom" is such that both meanings can be put there. What people have been doing for two centuries. For some, freedom is the right to divine fire, for others it is the right to scum.

It is not by chance that the picture was truncated in Soviet textbooks. The naked breasts of a young woman are of dubious spiritual value, but at least not ugly. What if it was the shriveled chest of an old woman?

The answer is at the bottom of the canvas. Why are men without pants fighting for Freedom?! And how ominous is the combination of a pantsless dead man with a half-naked girl in the overall composition...

And what does the other man, on all fours, lust after? Is he looking at the banner, or, excuse me, at ladies' charms? Or is it the same for him?

Delacroix, of course, will not answer these questions for us. We must answer them for ourselves.

Delacroix only helped us sharpen the problem in images.

In Christianity, Freedom is revered as the highest value, but it is always emphasized that we are talking about the shrine of "Freedom from sin."

This is when a person is free from the need to do evil, and free from slavery to his internal vices, passions.

But liberalism has changed concepts. Freedom became without trousers and without a dress, by "freedom" they began to understand a vile orgy, which no one interferes with and which no one condemns.

Therefore, when you once again begin to sing hymns to Freedom - ask if the anthem singers have it in their pants? Does it act as a sacrament, elevating a person, or does it imply an orgy that freely reduces a person to cattle?

Freedom leading the people. Freedom at the barricades 1830
260x325cm oil on canvas
Musee du Louvre, Paris, France

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
“Liberty Leading the People” (fr. La Liberté guidant le peuple), or “Freedom on the Barricades” is a painting by the French artist Eugene Delacroix. It is considered one of the key milestones between the Ages of Enlightenment and Romanticism.
In the center of the picture is a woman known as Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic and the personification of the national motto "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" (there is an alternative point of view that the woman is not Marianne, but is an allegory of the republic). In this image, Delacroix managed to combine the greatness of the ancient goddess and the courage of a simple woman from the people. On her head is a Phrygian cap (a symbol of freedom during the first French revolution), in her right hand is the flag of Republican France, in her left hand is a gun. Barefoot and bare-chested, symbolizing the dedication of the French, who are able to go to the enemy with “bare chest”, she walks over a pile of corpses, as if coming out of the canvas directly at the viewer.
Liberty is followed by representatives of various social classes - worker, bourgeois, teenager - symbolizing the unity of the French people during the July Revolution. Some art historians and critics suggest that the artist depicted himself in the image of a man in a top hat to the left of the main character; according to others, the playwright Etienne Arago or the curator of the Louvre Frederic Willot could serve as a model.

In his diary, the young Eugène Delacroix wrote on May 9, 1824: "I felt in myself the desire to write on contemporary subjects." This was not a random phrase, a month earlier he had recorded a similar phrase, “I want to write about the plots of the revolution.” The artist has repeatedly spoken about the desire to write on contemporary topics, but very rarely realized these desires. This happened because Delacroix believed “...everything should be sacrificed for the sake of harmony and a real transmission of the plot. We must manage in pictures without models. A living model never corresponds exactly to the image that we want to convey: the model is either vulgar or inferior, or its beauty is so different and more perfect that everything has to be changed.

The artist preferred plots from novels to the beauty of a life model. “What should be done to find the plot? he asks himself one day. - Open a book that can inspire and trust your mood! And he sacredly follows his own advice: every year the book becomes more and more a source of themes and plots for him.

Thus, the wall gradually grew and strengthened, separating Delacroix and his art from reality. Thus closed in his solitude, the revolution of 1830 found him. Everything that a few days ago constituted the meaning of the life of the romantic generation was instantly thrown far back, began to “look small” and unnecessary in the face of the grandeur of the events that had taken place. The astonishment and enthusiasm experienced during these days invade the secluded life of Delacroix. Reality loses its repulsive shell of vulgarity and everydayness for him, revealing real greatness, which he never saw in it and which he had previously sought in Byron's poems, historical chronicles, ancient mythology and in the East.

The July days echoed in the soul of Eugene Delacroix with the idea of ​​a new painting. The barricade battles of 27, 28 and 29 July in French history decided the outcome of a political upheaval. These days, King Charles X, the last representative of the Bourbon dynasty hated by the people, was overthrown. For the first time for Delacroix, this was not a historical, literary or oriental plot, but real life. However, before this idea was embodied, he had to go through a long and difficult path of change.

R. Escollier, the artist's biographer, wrote: “At the very beginning, under the first impression of what he saw, Delacroix did not intend to depict Freedom among its adherents ... He simply wanted to reproduce one of the July episodes, such as, for example, the death of d'Arcole." Yes , then many feats were accomplished and sacrifices were made. The heroic death of d "Arcol is associated with the capture of the Paris City Hall by the rebels. On the day when the royal troops kept under fire the suspension bridge Greve, a young man appeared who rushed to the town hall. He exclaimed: "If I die, remember that my name is d" Arcole. He really was killed, but he managed to drag the people along with him and the town hall was taken. Eugene Delacroix made a sketch with a pen, which, perhaps, became the first sketch for future picture, The fact that this was not an ordinary drawing is evidenced by the exact choice of the moment, and the completeness of the composition, and the thoughtful accents on individual figures, and the architectural background, organically merged with the action, and other details.This drawing could really serve as a sketch to the future picture, but the art historian E. Kozhina believed that he remained just a sketch that had nothing to do with the canvas that Delacroix painted later. The artist is already getting a little figure of one d "Arcola, rushing forward and captivating with his heroic impulse rebels. Eugene Delacroix transfers this central role to Liberty itself.

The artist was not a revolutionary and he himself admitted it: "I am a rebel, but not a revolutionary." Politics was of little interest to him, which is why he wanted to depict not a single fleeting episode (even if it was the heroic death of d'Arcol), not even a separate historical fact, but the nature of the whole event. So, the scene, Paris, can only be judged by a piece, written in the background of the picture on the right side (in the depths, the banner raised on the tower of the Notre Dame Cathedral is barely visible), but in the city houses.The scale, the feeling of the immensity and scope of what is happening - this is what Delacroix tells his huge canvas and what the image would not give private episode, even majestic.

The composition of the picture is very dynamic. In the center of the picture is a group of armed men in simple clothes, it moves towards the foreground of the picture and to the right. Because of the powder smoke, the square is not visible, nor is it visible how large this group itself is. The pressure of the crowd filling the depth of the picture forms an ever-increasing internal pressure, which must inevitably break through. And so, ahead of the crowd, from a cloud of smoke to the top of the taken barricade, a beautiful woman with a three-colored republican banner in her right hand and a gun with a bayonet in her left stepped broadly. On her head is a red Phrygian cap of the Jacobins, her clothes flutter, exposing her chest, the profile of her face resembles the classical features of the Venus de Milo. This is Freedom, full of strength and inspiration, which shows the way to the fighters with a decisive and courageous movement. Leading people through the barricades, Svoboda does not order or command - she encourages and leads the rebels.

When working on a picture in Delacroix's worldview, two opposite principles collided - inspiration inspired by reality, and on the other hand, a distrust of this reality that had long been rooted in his mind. Distrust of the fact that life can be beautiful in itself, that human images and purely pictorial means can convey the idea of ​​the picture in its entirety. This distrust dictated Delacroix's symbolic figure of Liberty and some other allegorical refinements.

The artist transfers the whole event into the world of allegory, reflects the idea in the same way as Rubens, whom he idolized (Delacroix told the young Edouard Manet: “You need to see Rubens, you need to feel Rubens, you need to copy Rubens, because Rubens is a god”) in his compositions, personifying abstract concepts. But Delacroix still does not follow his idol in everything: freedom for him is symbolized not by an ancient deity, but by the simplest woman, who, however, becomes royally majestic. Allegorical Freedom is full of vital truth, in a swift impulse it goes ahead of the column of revolutionaries, dragging them along and expressing the highest meaning of the struggle - the power of an idea and the possibility of victory. If we did not know that the Nika of Samothrace was dug out of the ground after the death of Delacroix, it could be assumed that the artist was inspired by this masterpiece.

Many art historians noted and reproached Delacroix for the fact that all the greatness of his painting cannot obscure the impression that at first turns out to be only barely noticeable. We are talking about a clash in the mind of the artist of opposing aspirations, which left its mark even in the completed canvas, Delacroix's hesitation between a sincere desire to show reality (as he saw it) and an involuntary desire to raise it to cothurna, between an attraction to painting emotional, direct and already established artistic tradition. Many were not satisfied that the most ruthless realism, which horrified the well-meaning audience of art salons, was combined in this picture with impeccable, ideal beauty. Noting as a virtue the feeling of life authenticity, which had never before been manifested in the work of Delacroix (and never again then), the artist was reproached for the generalization and symbolism of the image of Freedom. However, for the generalization of other images, blaming the artist for the fact that the naturalistic nakedness of a corpse in the foreground is adjacent to the nakedness of Freedom. This duality did not escape both Delacroix's contemporaries and later connoisseurs and critics. Even 25 years later, when the public was already accustomed to the naturalism of Gustave Courbet and Jean-Francois Millet, Maxime Ducan still raged before Liberty on the Barricades, forgetting about all restraint expressions: “Oh, if Freedom is like that, if this girl with bare feet and bare chest, who runs, screaming and brandishing a gun, then we don’t need her. We have nothing to do with this shameful vixen!”

But, reproaching Delacroix, what could be opposed to his picture? The revolution of 1830 was reflected in the work of other artists. After these events, the royal throne was occupied by Louis Philippe, who tried to present his coming to power as almost the only content of the revolution. Many artists who have taken this approach to the topic have rushed along the path of least resistance. Revolution, like a spontaneous popular wave, like a grandiose popular impulse, for these masters, it seems that it does not exist at all. They seem to be in a hurry to forget everything they saw on the Parisian streets in July 1830, and the “three glorious days” appear in their image as well-meaning actions of the Parisian citizens, who were only concerned with how to quickly acquire a new king to replace the exiled one. Among these works include Fontaine's painting "Guards proclaiming King Louis-Philippe" or the painting by O. Vernet "The Duke of Orleans leaving the Palais Royal".

But, pointing to the allegorical nature of the main image, some researchers forget to note that the allegorical nature of Freedom does not at all create dissonance with the rest of the figures in the picture, does not look as foreign and exceptional in the picture as it might seem at first glance. After all, the rest of the acting characters are also allegorical in essence and in their role. In their person, Delacroix, as it were, brings to the fore those forces that made the revolution: the workers, the intelligentsia and the plebs of Paris. A worker in a blouse and a student (or artist) with a gun are representatives of quite definite strata of society. These are, undoubtedly, bright and reliable images, but Delacroix brings this generalization of them to symbols. And this allegory, which is already clearly felt in them, reaches its highest development in the figure of Freedom. This is a formidable and beautiful goddess, and at the same time she is a daring Parisian. And nearby, a nimble, disheveled boy is jumping on stones, screaming with delight and brandishing pistols (as if orchestrating events), a little genius of the Parisian barricades, whom Victor Hugo will call Gavroche in 25 years.

The painting "Freedom on the Barricades" ends the romantic period in the work of Delacroix. The artist himself was very fond of this painting of his and made a lot of efforts to get it into the Louvre. However, after the seizure of power by the "bourgeois monarchy", the exposition of this canvas was banned. Only in 1848, Delacroix was able to exhibit his painting once more, and even for quite a long time, but after the defeat of the revolution, it ended up in the storeroom for a long time. The true meaning of this work by Delacroix is ​​determined by its second name, unofficial. Many have long been accustomed to seeing in this picture the "Marseillaise of French painting."