The Raft of the Medusa: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

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''The Raft of the Medusa'' contains the gestures and grand scale of traditional history painting; however, it presents ordinary people, rather than heroes, reacting to the unfolding drama.<ref name="Boime141">Boime, 141</ref> Géricault's raft pointedly lacks a hero, and his painting presents no cause beyond sheer survival. The work represents, in the words of Christine Riding, "the fallacy of hope and pointless suffering, and at worst, the basic human instinct to survive, which had superseded all moral considerations and plunged civilised man into barbarism".<ref name="Christine"/>

The artist's abolitionist views are said to have been expressed in his decision to prominently feature at least two Black individuals, particularly the dominant figure seen waving a dark red handkerchief. According to scholars Klaus Berger and Diane Chalmers Johnson, Géricault made "him the focal point of the drama, the strongest and most perceptive of the survivors, in a sense, the 'hero of the scene.'"<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last1=Berger |first1=Klaus |last2=Johnson |first2=Diane Chalmers |date=1969 |title=Art as Confrontation: The Black Man in the Work of Gericault |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25087857 |journal=The Massachusetts Review |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=301–340 |jstor=25087857 |issn=0025-4878}}</ref> They argue that the artist's choice to do so was not a "last-minute" decision as evidenced by early sketches for the work, including a portrait study of the Haitian model Joseph, and point to Géricault's concerns regarding the "extreme cruelties" of illegal [[History of slavery|slave trade]] in the [[List of French possessions and colonies|French colonies]].<ref name=":0" /> Depicting a Black figure as a hero to convey an abolitionist message was uncommon at the time, as the official symbol of the French abolitionist group, the ''[[Society of the Friends of the Blacks|Société des amis des Noirs]]'', was an emblem, originally created by [[Josiah Wedgwood|Josiah Wedgewood]], titled [[Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion|“Am I Not a Man and a Brother?”]] (or “Ne suis-je pas ton frere?”) that depicts a Black man begging on one knee for liberation. Scholar Susan Libby highlights how this trope of a helpless, subservient slave became commonplace in European art.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Libby |first=Susan H. |title=Blacks and Blackness in European Art of the Long Nineteenth Century |last2=Childs |first2=Adrienne L. |publisher=Ashgate Publishing |year=2014 |isbn=978-1-4094-2200-6 |location=Burlington, VT |pages=23-25}}</ref> Gericault’s choice to place the Black man as the active “hero” deviated from popular ideas about enslaved people. The subject of marine tragedy was undertaken by [[J. M. W. Turner]] (1775–1851), who, like many English artists, probably saw Géricault's painting when it was exhibited in London in 1820.<ref name="r89">Riding (June 2003), 89</ref><ref>"[http://www.artsmia.org/crossing-the-channel/historical.html Crossing the Channel]". Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, 2003. Retrieved on 1 January 2009.</ref> His ''A Disaster at Sea'' ({{Circa|1835}}) chronicled a similar incident, this time a British catastrophe, with a swamped vessel and dying figures also placed in the foreground. Placing a person of color in the centre of the drama was revisited by Turner, with similar [[Abolitionism|abolitionist]] overtones, in his ''[[The Slave Ship]]'' (1840).<ref name="r89" />

The unblemished musculature of the central figure waving to the rescue ship is reminiscent of the Neoclassical, however the naturalism of light and shadow, the authenticity of the desperation shown by the survivors and the emotional character of the composition differentiate it from Neoclassical austerity. It was a further departure from the religious or classical themes of earlier works because it depicted contemporary events with ordinary and unheroic figures. Both the choice of subject matter and the heightened manner in which the dramatic moment is depicted are typical of Romantic painting—strong indications of the extent to which Géricault had moved from the prevalent Neoclassical movement.<ref name="Wilkin"/>